Second tier cities hitting peak traffic problems

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From Xinhua:

When the evening rush hour comes, taxi driver Tao Xingzhong rolls down the window and lights a cigarette. He smokes to kill the time while crawling along in traffic jams in this eastern China city.“More and more cars, more and more congestions,” Tao sighs. “I just cannot understand why so many people still want to buy cars since the traffic is so bad.”

Traffic congestion no longer only occurs in China’s metropolises of Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, but also in the country’s second- and third-tiered cities, like Hefei, capital of Anhui Province.

With a population of 3 million, Hefei has about 450,000 vehicles and more than 200 new cars hit the road every day, according to local traffic authorities.

In comparison, Beijing has a population of 20 million and more than 4.5 million vehicles, with almost 2,000 new cars on the road every day.

“Buses are always crowded and taxis difficult to catch. It’s getting colder and colder and I don’t want my child to suffer,” says Huang Caixia, a young mother in Hefei whose family bought a new car two months ago.

Nationwide, China reported a total of 199 million vehicles at the end of September, including 85 million cars, according to the Traffic Management Bureau under the Ministry of Public Security.

About two thirds of the country’s total 667 cities report traffic congestions during rush hours. Traffic woes even have spread to the remote ethnic western cities of Urumqi and Lhasa.

In the central Chinese city of Zhengzhou, cars are always seen traveling on non-motorvehicle lanes in peak hours, while bicyclists take to the sidewalks. Quarrels are often heard in the streams of people and vehicles.

Traffic congestion can cost 15 major Chinese cities almost 1 billion yuan (150 million U.S. dollars) every day, Niu Wenyuan, chief scientist of the Sustainable Development Strategy Research Team under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said in a recent report.

Commuters in cities like Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou spend a total of 480 million hours more than Europeans on their way to work, bringing the average road speed down to 12 km per hour, the same as decades ago when most Chinese rode bicycles to work, he said.

The time wasted in those 15 major cities can translate into billions of yuan in losses, he said.

“Traffic is a very important issue for a city to create a harmonious environment. Traffic congestion not only wastes huge amounts of energy, but also spoils people’s moods. That is really bad for harmony,” he said.

Surging car sales and flawed mass transit systems are often blamed for China’s traffic jams. For second- and third-tiered cities, they are just copying the development mode of the metropolises — selling cars first and then building roads.

“Urban planners lacked foresight when laying out roads at the very beginning, and the previous road designs and traffic management systems lag behind the fast urban expansion and development,” said Li Yixiang, a local lawmaker in Anhui.

“Mass transit systems should be improved greatly and underground space should be utilized, such as building more underground parking lots and public transport transfer stations,” said Li, of the Anhui Provincial Department of Land and Resources.

To ease traffic congestion, Beijing and other cities have limited car usage, but this seems to have had little impact against a backdrop of booming car sales.

From January to October this year, China produced 14.62 million autos, up 34.49 percent year-on-year, and sold 14.68 million autos, up 34.76 percent, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers. Both figures have exceeded the total numbers of the whole of last year.

The association predicts auto output and sales would both surpass 17 million this year.

Since no local governments have voiced their intentions to restrict private car purchases, some experts have proposed hiking license plate fees, parking fees and fuel taxes to limit car use.

“We should charge higher parking fees in certain areas and certain hours based on the extent of congestion to prevent a number of cars from traveling in those areas at peak times,” said Zheng Yefu, a sociologist of the Peking University.

Lu Huapu, of the Tsinghua University who studies transport planning, believes Beijing has actually just entered its “congestion era,” and China’s provincial-level capitals and a number of other major cities will enter the “congestion era” within three to five years.

He says people cannot be deprived of their right to buy cars but something needs to be done about traffic congestion to protect the interests of everyone.

He has proposed a “congestion fee” to limit the amount of drivers on the road where there are too many vehicles. He says “when there is congestion, congestion fees should be charged.” He proposes that drivers should be penalized when their car speed drops below 15 km per hour for a certain duration. “Guaranteeing the normal operation of a city is critical.”