Beijing Traffic Went along with "Green Olympics"

Creation date: 08 October 2008

The 29th Olympic Games have successfully closed. From the end of July, public transport departments developed 34 Olympic Special Bus Lines to facilitate audiences, staff, volunteers and media personnel to take. Although, the Olympic Special Buses look like general buses from the appearance, most of them have already reached the European IV emission standards for diesel vehicles, cleaner and protecting environment than ordinary gasoline and diesel vehicles. Olympic Special Bus Line 1 which operates around the National Stadium and National Aquatics Center is green and protecting environment because its buses are equipped with mixed power vehicles, no pollution. Choosing the lower pollution and no pollution buses to serve the Olympic Special Bus Lines is to promote environmental protection, achieving the promises of "Green Olympics".

      From the end of July, nearly 500 mixed power buses have entered the National Stadium, National Aquatics Center and other 35 Olympic venues to serve the Olympic Games. In order to ensure the goals of "24-hour uninterrupted service" and "no fault in bus operation" during the Olympics, the project team of mixed power buses made a detailed service and assurance plan from operation assurance, maintenance, vehicles management, spare parts management, operation account, backup support, logistics service, emergency disposal and other aspects and staff continuously served 24 hours a day, examining 20 projects of every bus to ensure buses running well.

      According to statistic, during the Olympic Games, 34 Olympic Special Bus Lines which served for 31 venues in Beijing averagely ferried more than 80 million audiences, staff, volunteers and media personnel every day and started more than 9,000 buses, becoming audiences’ first choice of public transport to venues. Olympic Special Bus Lines not only safely and smoothly transported passengers, but also contributed to blue sky in Beijing.

      The research and development of these new green energy sources vehicles are only small parts of Beijing traffic practicing "Green Olympics" in recent years. When determining the strategy of public transport priority development, the municipal government began to improve passenger and freight transport vehicles to reach the emission standards for national requirement, totally investing unprecedented 19.06 billion yuan. At the same time, the government speeded up update public transport vehicles, such as increasing 13,803 new public vehicles which satisfy environmental protection requirement, updating 62,000 taxis and adding 1118 air-conditioned subway trains. The government also intensified to improve inter-provincial long-distance vehicles, sight seeing buses and yellow-labeled vehicles, completing management of 3,262 yellow-labeled vehicles.

      In order to ensure normal traffic operation and good air quality during the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games, fulfilling our commitment when hosting the Games， Beijing carried out traffic control and management measures from July 1 such as the rule that yellow-labeled vehicles were banned from roads all day and the odd-and-even license plate rule that allowed private car owners to drive into the city only on alternate days, averagely reducing over 1.95 million vehicles daily, decreasing impact of vehicle exhaust emissions on atmosphere environment and effectively improving the air quality.

      After restricting the vehicles, the public transport has become the first choice of the public. In order to ensure the public travel demand, the transport departments increased the capacity of public transport, speeded up vehicles turnover and improved operational efficiency. When implementing the odd-and-even license plate rule from July 20, the transport departments daily devoted nearly 20,000 operational buses, increasing 2075 channel buses; increased bus time to average 167,000 times daily, almost 10% more than before; transported average 13247400 passengers daily; in order to facilitate to deal with unexpected incidents of large passenger flow, set mobile site in every station to evacuate passengers at any time.

      Subway travel has been public transport way of green and environmental protection. Subway operating corporation opened Subway Line 1, Line 8 and Airport Express in July 19, achieved new train operation plan of 3 minutes minimum interval in Line 5, increased capacity by 17% in the peak hour and adjusted Line Batong and Line 13 from four grouping to six grouping to meet the public travel demand. The entire subway network daily transported 4 million passengers from July 20 and created a record of daily transporting 4.922 million passengers on August 22.

      In addition, considering the influence of yellow-labeled ban and the odd-and-even license plate rule to freight transport during the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games, the city transport departments strengthened freight assurance to satisfy transport needs of urban production and living materials in accordance with the principle of "control total volume,divide demand, focus on key point, assure and limit, integrate resource and use green-labeled vehicles" to integrate green capacity resources to establish a "green team". The transport departments published green team enterprises and information of green-labeled vehicles to society to lead to use green-labeled vehicles, protect a good urban environment and complete task successfully.

      The city road departments focused on improving the roads and surrounding environment which were related to Olympic Games. The departments completed 156 roads which were 475 km around Olympic venues, the signing hotels, designated hospitals and tour areas, 120 roads which were 481km to relay torch and 59 roads which were 160.5km to hold matches of Road Cycling, Marathon and Triathlon. We handed in a green and qualified response in transport for the Beijing Olympic Games.

Source: http://2008.bjjtw.gov.cn/English/