Beijing has made a drastic move in trying to reduce pollution and congestion in the city, which reportedly has 3.4 million vehicles on the road, and still increasing! It has banned certain cars from being used on certain days.
Basically it works like this – cars with number plates ending with 1 and 6 are banned on Mondays, 2 and 7 are banned on Tuesday, 3 and 8 are banned on Wednesdays, 4 and 9 are banned on Thursday, and 5 and 0 are banned on Fridays. All cars can travel on weekends. This will last for a 6 month trial. The cities of Shanghai and Jiangsu will follow this ban albeit a more relaxed version – the ban will only affect vehicles that belong to the government, or government-linked companies.
Apparently future amendments to the system will include a variable ban which allows more cars on the road when the air quality is good, but ban up to half of the cars on the road whenever the air condition is bad such as above 300 points on the Air Pollution Index. Anything above 100 is harmful to children and old folks. They are also mulling the idea of a congestion charge to enter the city.
I cannot begin to imagine how frustrating this is for the Chinese folk, especially since there are bound to be some areas not covered well by public transport. Some families, especially well to do ones, are purchasing third or fourth cars with different number plates to go around this new ruling.
If we ever read about the Transport Minister and his entourage making a “study trip” to Beijing… we’d all better be afraid, VERY afraid. You never know when they may randomly pick up ideas like this to justify their existence, despite our public transport system being in a sorry state, according to the PM himself when he tried it out some time ago.
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the scary thing about this is, the klang valley has an even higher penetration rate of car ownership as compared to beijing.
Poor for beijing ppl, last Olympic event had shown them how inconvenient living dairly without own transport. I wonder how successful can this plant be since the China folks are so stubborn and lack of traffic police in the town…
Please lah, don’t be so selfish.
They do it for air pollution, this is certainly good.
Compare to govt ban all motorcycles suggestion, who is STUPIDER?
commonla china !!!! the major cause of air pollution was because of the governemnet in which they developed physically like hell till not considering air pollution !!! and now when the probs start to appear, they start to point it at vehicles !!! even discovery channel showed this before !!!
its a pity that a 52years nation after independence, can’t even match our little neighbouring country in south… as their public transport are world best!
not even KL public transport… sigh…
hang on. i understand the intent behind doing this but i believe a more gentle approach should be taken with phased implementation.
what alternatives do commuters have besides public transport (which is deplorable in Beijing)? car pool? not very practical.
contrast this with Japan where companies are required by law to provide public transport allowance to employees.
if i ever own car in china , my car no. plate gonna oni hav alphabet or im going to buy all big cc car wif every car got diff no. on it
see how the government goin to stop dat…
I just hope that our G would not blindly copy this policy imposed by China! They should really consider and understand that our public transport is probably the worst in Asia!
our g will not copy, it will be worst. LOL.
you wanna enter city? you pay per hour!
muahahahahahahah! more cash for the pockets!
i been to beijing before for 2 week…
highly poluted air… merely can breath.. not a place for malaysian to breath :)
they have bike & bicycle lane of the left.. and car/bus lane on the right. As i know, whole beijing only allow 1000bike. remaining is carsss…. so, there are lots of cars. Terrible traffic jam after office hour. much worst than Bkt bintang after work.
Fortunately, there are good pedestrian walking path at both side of the main road. very convenient if you wan to walk or cycle. And enjoy the traffic jam scenary.. haha.
main cause of beijing traffic jam…
1) very stupid traffic light system. lots of cars stuck at the centre of the junction, and causing massive jam at all direction.
2) stupid driver to cause massive jam, by running into red light and get themself stuck in junction, and block others cars coming in other direction.
if they can improved the junction, and punish those stubborn driver.. beijing city will be a great place to drive. they driving lane is big, few lane, and the road conditionis excellent quality.
i tink is not a wise move
this wil encourage ppl to own more than 1 car in order to get ride of the rules
short sighted i would say
Despite the criticism, I think it is a great move from China to do this. Great nations like USA, Australia are the heaviest polluters. When these countries are asked to reduce pollution and thus lead by examples, they start whining about consequences of their “fragile” economy, inconvenience… bla bla bla…
Now China is showing the world they are doing something. If there is a will, there is a way.
a really weird law
hurm…..i tot that kilang2 are the main contributors for air & water pollutions? why not enforce a strict rule to them? and….please do something about those stupid drivers as well.
what about computers? computers are a main source of pollution.
the faeces from china is enough to pollute the world. thats what i think.
japan can keep themselves so clean. why cant china? or do they need to hold an olympic every month in every city.