06 Jul 2007
Walk the talk fast
Posted by: Squareface In: Taking in; on; and to Shanghai (or China in general)
BEIJING (AFP) - Beijing is planning to ban a million cars from the city’s streets for two weeks next month as a test-run to ensure clean air at next year’s Olympics, officials said here Wednesday.”The plan has been drawn up and is ready to go,” said Fan Yinlong, a city government spokesman, referring to a range of measures that will include the ban on one million cars in notoriously polluted Beijing from August 7-20.
That two-week period is crucial to Olympic planners, as it roughly coincides with the time that the Games will be held next year, from August 8-24.
Beijing will also host 11 Olympic test events during the fortnight, including cycling road races, wrestling, hockey and beach volleyball.
Beijing has spent around 15 billion dollars on a massive pollution clean-up in the run-up to the Olympics, according to city officials, but air quality remains a key concern.
Despite assurances from the Chinese government, International Olympic Committee leaders have expressed deep concern about the problem and demanded “contingency measures” to contain the pollution threat.
Beijing Olympic organising committee spokeswoman Zhu Jing also confirmed that the traffic ban was being prepared as part of the one-year countdown test program.
Zhu said the plan to remove one million of Beijing’s three million cars was inspired by a similar campaign that proved effective during a China-Africa summit hosted by Beijing last year.
“Air quality was better, and traffic congestion improved,” she said.
Zhu said the measures would be officially announced once they are approved by the city’s rubber-stamp People’s Congress on July 24.
It’s amazing that such large-scale activities can be executed in such short-notice in China sometimes.
I witnessed for myself how severe traffic jams can be in Beijing during my trip there in May, and I can’t remember whether it was the cab driver who told us that during the Olympics next year, the government will simply ban people from using their cars to facilitate traffic during the Games. And so the traffic problem will be solved, albeit only temporarily, by such dictation.
