total ownership of vehicles in Beijing reached 2.876 million at the end of 2006, rising to 3 million in May; it is estimated that it will surpass 3.25 million before the opening of the Olympics next August. While enhancing mobility for some people, the galloping development of private vehicle ownership has presented unprecedented challenges to the efficiency of Beijing's public transport system.

"This growing speed is not only the fastest among all Chinese cities, but also without parallel in the world," said Liu. The result of the Beijing people's love affair with cars is that the city's rapid road construction is hardly able to keep up with the flood of new vehicles, with the majority spending much of their time stuck in traffic. Vehicle emissions have become a major source of air pollution in Beijing.

During a four-day traffic control experiment in August during the Olympic test events, Beijing's cars with even-numbered license plates and with odd-numbered license plates took turns to hit the road every other day. Beijing's average public transportation speed rose from 14 km per hour to 20 km per hour and air pollution density fell by nearly 20 percent.

"Attracting vehicle owners in the city back to daily commutes is the key to the success of Beijing's public transportation first strategy," said a commentary in the daily newspaper The Beijing News. It went further to say that cheaper bus and subway tickets are not enough enticement for people who own a car to leave it at home; that nothing less than a faster and more comfortable commuting experience would work.

Toward this end, Beijing has upgraded facilities of buses and subway cars by purchasing air-conditioned buses and subway cars and equipping them with TV screens. Passengers on the newly opened subway line will be able to watch Olympic competitions live next year while riding the subway. To avoid passengers surging onto buses or trains in a cacophony of shoving, as anyone who has traveled on Beijing's public transport has experienced, more have been put into service to prevent overcrowding.

Another measure to reduce car use and emphasize bus routes and underground lines is the construction of 26 parking lots at suburban stations and at rapid bus transit terminals. They allow drivers to park in a convenient location at a cheap rate for a whole day. The city government has also embarked on a program to increase the number of bus lanes in Beijing, from the current length of 165 km to 450 km by 2010.

Toward a livable city

On September 13, the Beijing-based International Institute for Urban Development released a ranking of Chinese cities' branding value for 287 medium-sized and large cities. The first of its kind in China, it lists Beijing as the best city for job hunting and sightseeing. However, Beijing falls into the 10th place on the index of best city to live in. The two factors that affect Beijing's ranking are high property prices and bad traffic.

In early 2005, Beijing publicized the city's long-term development plan, which says that Beijing should develop into a cosmopolitan capital city, renowned as a pleasant place to live, by 2020. This is the first time that creating a city that is pleasant to live in has appeared as a development goal for Beijing in an official document. The word "pleasant" is defined as having plentiful employment opportunities, a comfortable living environment and sustainable and human-oriented development models, according to the document. In the plan, the city's spatial structure is split into "two axis, two zones, multiple centers" so that activity in the city is dispersed out from the traditional city center to a constellation of different centers. Thus the traffic pressure in downtown areas will be significantly relieved.

But until that day comes, Beijing will have to live with the stigma of being a city with traffic problems. In September 2006, Beijing slipped 10 notches to number 14 in a national poll on life quality in Chinese cities, in which 773,325 netizens voted. Among all the 287 surveyed cities, Beijing ranked last in public satisfaction over traffic, far below the second-worst Suzhou in Jiangsu Province.