Beijing Unveils Traffic Plan

With less than 50 days to the Olympics, Chinese authorities on Friday announced widely-expected plans to almost halve its car population in the capital for a two month period.

Starting July 20th, drivers of even and odd-numbers license plates will only be able to drive on alternate days until September 20th, almost a month after the close of the Olympics and three days after the closing ceremony of the Paralympics.

Authorities expressed confidence these measures will produce clean air in time for the Games.
"We have the confidence and capability to guarantee the good air quality. We can promise the air quality can be improved to meet the previous target we set," said Du Shaozhong, spokesman from the city's Environmental Protection Bureau.

The measures are expected to take about 45% of Beijing's 3.29 million cars off the roads, including 300,000 government vehicles. It will also increase public transportation users by four million, said authorities.

Though the plan was widely anticipated, its duration could encourage Beijing's more affluent drivers to attempt to evade it by switching license plates or using alternate cars. That could lessen the impact of this attempt to reduce the city's car population.

Several multi-nationals have already purchased or made arrangements to purchase alternate license plates for their fleet to enable ease of movement, according to people familiar with the matter.

Beijing is struggling to clear the skies in time for the Olympics, despite a wide-ranging sweep of rules already in effect. These include tougher car emission standards and the closure of polluting factories across six Chinese provinces collectively larger in area than France, Germany and Italy combined.

Concerns over Beijing's still-poor air quality is causing some Olympians to consider only showing up for their events, skipping a lot of the festivities accompanying the Games. This week, for example, members of Australia's track and field contingent said they would stay in their Hong Kong training camp and skip the Games opening ceremony, partly because of "concerns of air quality," said spokesman Mike Tancred.

On Friday, Beijing's downtown noon skies were a dull grey and smelled faintly of smoke. Chinese readings rated air quality Level 3, or "slightly polluted," which is still on the higher end of readings usually recorded. Three weeks earlier on May 28 Beijing notched an unprecedented Level IV, or "Poor" pollution reading.

Nonetheless, Chinese authorities announced Thursday Beijing had 12 more blue sky days this year, compared to the same period the year before, and drops in major pollution indices such as concentrations of sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter.
A similar discrepancy in public perception and official readings occurred last August, when authorities did a test-run of these traffic controls for a four-day period. Authorities said the measures caused significant improvements in air quality and cut emissions discharged by 5,815 tons, but many residents felt only traffic flow improved markedly