Traffi c in Beijing, China remains a challenging public policy issue.
Bloomberg/Nelson Ching

Beijing, like many other big cities worldwide, has been facing serious traffic jams, particularly on weekdays. At least twice a day – in the morning and in the afternoon – private cars have to drive very slowly along the Chinese state capital city’s streets, side by side with taxis, public buses and trams in certain sections of the city. In other sections, drivers have to be extra cautious and to exercise restraint as they frequently have to encounter bicycles, motorcycles and three-wheeled motorcycle taxis, especially at intersections.

Thanks to China’s rapid economic growth, many more Chinese families have in the last 10 years been able to afford cars. Currently, there are some 5 million private cars registered in Beijing, which is home to 19 million residents. Apart from economic growth, the continuously increasing private-car population in China’s big cities is a direct impact of free trade and globalization, which has opened up China’s market to a wide variety of foreign goods and products, including cars.

“However, traffic jams – and air pollution as the immediate impact of large numbers of vehicles – in Beijing these days are not as severe as five years ago,” a tour guide named Francis said.

Improvements in traffic and air conditions in Beijing cannot be separated from the government’s (both the Beijing municipality and China’s central government) efforts to establish an integrated transportation service and a pleasant environment for the capital city’s residents as well as rigid discipline and legal sanctions against violators of traffic regulations.

One of effective measure to reduce the people’s reliance on private cars is the establishment of the
Beijing Subway. While the first subway line was already in existence in 1969, a lot more lines were established for the 2008 Beijing Olympics and a few more are under construction.

And while it is nearly impossible to prevent the influx of foreign cars, the Beijing municipal administration has taken a number of bold actions to prevent the worsening impact of the rising number of private cars in the city.

The first measure is improving the quality of public transportation services. Another is issuing a city bylaw on traffic restrictions that prohibits cars from entering the city on one of the five working days based on license plates. By doing so, the city sees only four-fifths of the overall number of cars on the streets each day.

Another measure is to limit car ownership in Beijing. The Beijing municipal administration has imposed a lottery system on car registrations, with only 20,000 new car registration numbers available every month. So, any Beijing resident can only purchase a car after he or she obtains his or her car registration number.

All those measures exclude the municipal government’s efforts to establish convenient sidewalks in the city to encourage people to leave their cars and walk short distances instead, a measure that also significantly reduces traffic on the city’s streets.

What about Jakarta then? Facing a similar problem of the increasing number of cars Indonesia’s capital city could and should take similar measures in order to prevent the severe traffic jams from turning into complete traffic gridlock, which could happen in 2014 if no significant measures are taken to prevent it.

The measures to be taken do not necessarily the same as the ones already taken by Beijing. There are a lot of options. One thing is clear: The Jakarta city administration must be creative and innovative.

—JP/Imanuddin Razak

Popular

Retail sales, consumer confidence ease as Idul Fitri boost dissipates

Students to rally against Prabowo amid economic pressures

Number of forcibly displaced people dips to 118 million: UN