China Considering Road Congestion Fees
29 February 2008
Xinhua. China is considering charging fees on some of its traffic-congested urban roads, according to Wang Fengwu, deputy director of the Ministry of Construction’s urban construction department, speaking at a forum in Shanghai.
Fees could be charged on the basis of the frequency and intensity of vehicles road use “to reduce people’s excessive dependence on cars,” he said.
“We will learn the concept of properly allotting urban road space resource as advocated by international communities,” he said. Wang said the country would change the current vehicle-oriented practice of allotting road space into a traveler-oriented one with more space given to buses, bicycles and pedestrians.
Currently, public transport only handles less than 10 percent of journeys in most Chinese cities.
Good example of why public transportation projects are necessary. Cities start to choke on their own success and negatives aspects increase.
Maybe suburban collection lots and high speed public transport links to the downtown core can alleviate some of the congestion and still allow cities to be capital creation centres. Otherwise congestion will cause increasing costs to accrue.
Posted by: aym | 29 February 2008 at 10:33 AM