Sun Ruizhuo (China Business News): Beijing is planning to collect rush hour fees to ease the pressure on the city's traffic. The question is whether this fee program will really help to clear Beijing's overcrowded streets.

In my opinion, we need to learn lessons from London's negative example. The traffic situation is worse comparing when the plan was first put forward. In 2007, it took a car 2.27 minutes to travel 1 km, while it took 2.3 minutes in February 2003.

The government's administrative expenditures ate up a large amount of the collected fees, while little was spent on the improvement of the city's public traffic system. In the year 2007, while administrative expenditures reached £160 million ($256 million), less than £10 million ($16 million) of the revenue was spent on bus upgrades and the improvement of the traffic system. As a result, London's rush hour fee collection system is criticized as a bureaucratic waste.

Without a reasonable plan for improving the overall traffic system, rush hour fees will easily be embezzled as funds to serve a small group of privileged people or departments. More importantly, rush hour fees should come with the condition of building a fully developed public traffic system and a more mature traffic management and road planning system. Otherwise, no matter how heavy the fee burden is, city traffic will not ease up.

Pei Jiaojian (Xinmin Evening News): On one hand, we cannot guarantee that other countries' success can be repeated in China. On the other hand, car users who earn less and are unwilling to pay the extra fee may ultimately bend to it because of their need to drive. Today, gas prices are already very high, but seldom do we see drivers give up cars because of these high expenses. As long as public buses, subways and other public traffic options are less than ideal, collecting rush hour fees will do little to ease traffic pressure in big cities.

Actually, Beijing has already set a good example in solving the congestion problem by offering cheap public transportation services. In the first working day after the New Year holiday, when the new transportation program was launched by Beijing Public Transport Holdings Ltd., buses were operating in a good order. Buses were sent on routes at much shorter intervals than ever before, while 70 percent of the buses reached their destinations on time. All bus lines are working smoothly, and most buses charge passengers only 0.4 yuan ($0.06) no matter how long the bus line is. More and more people are choosing public buses, and though the roads are still very crowded sometimes, the situation has improved greatly. This proves that a well-developed and friendly public transportation service network is the best solution to congestion problems, rather than the proposed rush hour fees.

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