Road tolls feasible, but subways full
- Source: Global Times
- [08:30 July 29 2010]
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Commuters crowd the Line 2 subway at People's Square station Wednesday afternoon. Photo: Cai Xianmin
By Liu Dong
As urban planning officials mind whether it would be feasible for Shanghai to become the first city on the Chinese mainland to charge private car owners for using the roads during rush hour to alleviate traffic congestion during peak periods, public transport authorities say that Expo visitors have already pushed passenger volumes to the brink.
The feasibility research, officially proposed by the Science and Technology Commission of Shanghai Municipality and Shanghai Urban Construction and Communications Commission at the end of 2008, has to date deemed that city infrastructure is available to support such a system via the use of public tolls on city roads.
The departments previously said that the plan was inspired from other big cities such as London and Singapore, which apply a similar system to their roads to encourage more drivers to take public transport during busy hours.
But subway authorities raised concerns about capacity issues yesterday, following the increase in commuters seen over the past few months since more visitors started arriving in the city for the World Expo 2010 in Shanghai - with passenger volumes breaking new records almost daily.
The latest such record was achieved last Friday, when some 6.73 million commuters accounted for the passenger volume. Authorities project that figure to hit 7 million soon.
"Passenger capacity for the Line 1 and 2 subways have already reached their utmost limit," Shao Weizhong, manager of Shanghai Subway Operation and Management Center, told local media yesterday. "We have even had to restrict passengers from boarding several stations along Line 2 during rush hour to cope with the increased number of passengers."
According to Shao, the subways on the two busiest lines in the city, which run trains at intervals of roughly three minutes during peak hours, are unable to handle any more passengers.
