Chinese bloggers analyze Beijing's traffic controls

7:00 Monday morning, the last day of the test.

This is not a new insight, but it's particularly apparent this week, as memories of fluid traffic and relatively empty roads are still fresh from last weekend's four-day restricted driving experiment that took hundreds of thousands of cars off of Beijing roadways.

The test, part of the capital's Olympic preparations, had two goals: limiting air pollution, and easing the city's chronic gridlock. Danwei previously commented on the measures' ambiguous environmental effects; below is a look at road conditions, and how the results were spun in the national media.

Rose Luqiu, a Phoenix TV journalist with a popular blog, had some nice things to say about driving on Beijing's roads:

My photographer and I took just twenty minutes to go from the Shangri-La Hotel to Ritan Park. The fluid traffic had my colleague continually asking me, didn't you say that the east-west route was really jammed? Yes, in my own experience of Beijing, it's not at all unusual for a cab ride from Jianguomenwai to Zhongguancun during the morning and evening rush to take one-and-a-half to two hours. Then, from Ritan Park to the airport was not even half an hour. Looking at the somewhat empty scene flowing past the car window, I suddenly remembered that Beijing was testing its odd-even plan, and I had encountered the final day.

The air on that day wasn't anything special, but according to government monitoring, during the four-day odd-even test it was better than normal. Although I didn't sense any change in the air quality, I definitely felt that Beijing was an active city, a city in motion.

Controlling automobiles to improve air quality is done in different ways in different countries. In Singapore, for example, cars entering the city center are subject to variable fees...

However, these measures would not be very effective in Beijing, particularly fee assessment, since if the fees are reimbursed with public funds rather than being taken out of individual pockets, no matter how high they go, the car owners won't care a whit.

So in Beijing, the odd-even system is the fairest and most effective way to change congested conditions and provide everyone with clean air. For under these conditions, enjoying special privilege will appear over-ostentatious, and such display will be criticized in today's environment with its emphasis on harmony.

However, Beijing's air should not be clean only during the Olympics, and its traffic should not flow smoothly only during the Olympics. Through this trial we have discovered the great effect that this technique has on traffic and the environment. If the public is able to accept it, then should we consider making it a normal state of affairs? For the Olympics are just an interlude for Beijing; what the government really ought to be concerned about is the air that everyone living and working in Beijing breathes every day, and the time they spend in traffic each day.

Such optimism was not shared by everyone. The auto news website Top Speed quoted a forum commenter who was concerned with the implications the restrictions might have for other personal property:

1. Automobiles are private property. If you can limit my driving by staging a rehearsal today, then when you hold some convention tomorrow, can you require me to "donate" half of my estate? I'm afraid that even in the name of something even more sacred, without prior legal permission, you cannot decide what is done with my things.

2. If I stop driving, then I demand: a 2-day discount on road maintenance fees and a 2-day transportation supplement. Just because I'm a common person doesn't mean that I must simply pay out, and that you as the government do not have to provide remuneration. If the government and I stand in opposite corners, I can consider not driving, and if the compensation is sufficient, I could even consider not driving until the conclusion of the "most magnificent" Olympic Games.

3. I have family problems - my wife is pregnant, and I have no reason to respond to the government's "polite request" by letting my wife and the child inside her go to work by means they have no way to predict (and going to work is also for the Olympic cause, right?). If I may ask a question, has the government considered giving any support or compensation to the common people?

4. More generally, if my company is in the transport business, my workers need to eat, my stockholders need dividends, and I may even need to transport pork for the common people to eat. What about my costs? How will my interests be guaranteed? If the magnificent Olympics must have a rehearsal, where is the rehearsal for guaranteeing my interests?

5. From an economic perspective, can I spend money to purchase road rights? Will the odd-even limits spur the continued increase in vehicle numbers...will there be a rehearsal? So I won't heed any odd or even numbers. I'll go my own way, and let others say what they will!

The Top Speed article continued with some thoughts about how the media was spinning the issue:

This morning I was listening to 1039 Traffic Radio. From the SMS messages that the host read off, it seems the the listeners were wholly supportive of the odd-even restrictions. But was this really the case? I think not, at least for those netizens. Or perhaps the host simply did not read off their SMS messages. Like the Tianya post said, most of the media took a strongly supportive attitude toward the odd-even restrictions, all harmonious.

The Tianya post mentioned here concluded with a paragraph pointing out the media's typical show of unanimous support for government policy:

I continued to pay attention to the newspapers of the 19th, and I began to feel uncomfortable. The front pages of the newspapers were, without exception, about how satisfied the people were, how traffic had improved, and how pollution had decreased. Beijing Evening News even published a front-page story saying that netizens made comments in support of the odd-even restrictions. This is a bit shameless - you can check it out for yourselves. It doesn't even need to be mentioned that the major portals are all in support - opposing viewpoints weren't published. It's been that way for years, and it's the reason I don't visit BBSs at major portals anymore, because you can't find true speech there at all. But look into some relatively small forums and you'll find that support for the measures is actually quite rare. The media is under the control of the architects of this event; you say it's good and it's published - why put words in the mouth of the people? The people aren't idiots; they can see the details of the situation. If it were really good, truly effective, if the people were really satisfied, would it be necessary for the top story every day to be about how satisfied the people are? Are common people like us really so stupid? In short, Beijing's odd-even driving measures have gotten worse each day they've been promoted! I hope that the administrators, legislators, and civil servants can use their minds to improve their quality of service and lessen their reliance on inflexible regulations that are both crude and impractical. The Olympics have nothing to do with us - do they have nothing to do with you, too? Sustaining an image of good administration and presenting it to the world - it's your face, too!

Journalist Han Song, arriving in Beijing for a science fiction symposium, snapped the above photo and wrote the following in his blog:

Why was Beijing still grey when it had odd-even restrictions in place? This is a news headline, I think. There's always a passable rationalization that demonstrates our accomplishments and brushes away our problems. But Chinese media always lets the news slip away when it comes to this point. So how Beijing's weather turned out was manufactured by the media.

One TV station showed an interview with a Beijinger, who said, "In the past, Beijing's air was indeed poor, but now, it's excellent, excellent, excellent!" (his original words)

Acting as a huckster for the Olympics is one part of the glory of being a volunteer. And this is unrelated to environmental protection.

Actually, Beijing has the power to conduct an entirely-indoor Summer Olympics. A real "green Olympics, scientific Olympics, and human Olympics" would be in a Biosphere II-like athletic center. And this would propel the GDP. An excellent opportunity, wasted by the media. What a pity for the Environmental Protection Administration, and an even worse loss for the Real Estate Bureau.

Finally, FEER's Travellers' Tales blog notes that there is nothing new under the sun, with a quotation from a book titled Peking Dust, written by Ellen N. LaMotte and published in 1927:

Since our return we have been having dust-storms on an average of twice a week, big ones and little ones, lasting from a few hours to several days. There are two kinds: surface storms, when a tremendous wind blows dense clouds of fine, sharp dust along the streets and makes all outdoors intolerable; and overhead storms, which are another thing.

Follow the link below for more on Beijing's wonderful weather.