Smaller Chinese cities driving into 'congestion era'
- Source: Xinhua
- [08:37 December 06 2010]
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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) 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.
