Beijing's "No Car Days"
by John Laumer, Philadelphia on 05.17.06
According to Agence France-Presse, Environmental officials in Beijing have asked residents to stop driving their cars to work one day a month "in an effort to clean up the capital's stifling air pollution and ease traffic jams...More than 200,000 drivers in up to 100 Beijing auto clubs have agreed to comply with the voluntary request, the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau said in a report posted on its website". The request's trivial long term impact on air quality notwithstanding, those would be the days to ride one's bicycle or walk to work, to revel in life and to remember the freedom and beauty of an earlier time...or anticipate the Olympics. The psychology will be interesting. By helping people see what things could be like, assuming they get a high level of cooperation, there could be more willingness to look for better ways to get around. Which makes us wonder: Gas Hog-free days anyone? Wait. Let's limit this to people driving SUVs while wearing dress clothes...we're thinking about those guys you see wearing a suit and tie, driving their Mega-Truck to the office...so as to leave out the tradesmen and farmers who actually use those things for what they were designed.
Can't help but think of the irony of this. Remember when almost everyone in China uses bicycles to get around?
You've heard of Car Free Day right? It happens all over the planet, usually in August.
Well, Beijing's poor air quality is caused by more than just car pollution. Actually, more of it is caused by the continued use of coal for cooking and the large amount of dust and dirt from the nearby desert and thousands of construction sites in Beijing. It has been said that there is more construction going on in Beijing than in all of Europe. I believe it. There is also a lack of proper alternatives to using the roads (the subway systems is still a decade away from being something even close to "comprehensive" for a city this large).
One summer while working in sourthern Germany a couple of local towns had "car free days". This wasn't the entire region, but just individual villages.
It was a great idea, and made the entire town eerily quiet. Of course, except that you had to keep dodging out of the way of bicycles.