BEIJING MOVES TO REDUCE POLLUTION BEFORE THE OLYMPICS

By China correspondent Stephen McDonell
Posted Sat Aug 18, 2007 11:25am AEST



The trial will take a million cars off the road each day for the four days. (File photo) (Reuters: Jason Lee)
Stung by criticism that it will deliver an Olympic Games with unparalleled levels of pollution, Beijing is trying to clean up its air.

Yesterday the city took a million cars off the road as part of a four-day trial.

By all accounts the traffic was flowing more freely in the Chinese capital, but it is still unclear if such drastic car reduction measures will be enough to beat Beijing's notoriously bad smog.

The sound of flowing traffic is not something the Chinese people are used to in their capital - many jokingly call the city "the world's biggest car park".

But when you take a third of Beijing's cars off the streets, it is amazing the difference it makes.

Taxis, buses, high-level government cars and emergency vehicles are exempt from the driving ban.

For private car owners, number plates ending in even numbers stay home one day and those with odd numbers stay home the next.

The trial will take a million cars off the road each day for the four days.

Beijing's Olympic organisers hope the city's air quality will significantly improve.

Wang Hui is a spokeswoman for the Beijing Organising Committee.

"Over these next four days we'll carry out comprehensive tests, including the city's coping measures, its transportation and environment," she said.

"We consider transportation and environmental problems as major challenges. We want to achieve a victory, that's why we're reducing car numbers.

"We'll keep 1.3 million cars off the road to see whether the air will get better. If the air does improve, it'll be a very important element in our planning for next year."

When asked about how big a change she expects to see in the city's air quality, she said "we'll have to see over the next four days".

"If the community thinks the measure is indeed effective, we'll consider whether to apply it during the Olympics.

"If it's thought that there are more significant factors, such as rain or other extreme whether conditions, then it means the car test fails."


Short-term measure

Beijing's planners have been criticised harshly for doing nothing over recent decades while the city's air quality has plummeted. But they have also been praised in recent years for at least now trying to do something about it.

Lo Sze Ping from Greenpeace China has been monitoring the traffic reduction trial.

"If the number of cars running in the streets are greatly reduced, then the exhaust gas coming from automobiles will be reduced as a result as well. But that, as we said, would only be a very short-term, a very short-sighted measure," he said.

"Just reducing the number of the cars is not going to have a significant impact on the overall air quality if other things remain equal.

"It also depends on other sources of emission; from factories, from power plants. So it is not just cars that we should be concerned with."

Beijing's Environmental Protection Bureau is monitoring the city's air quality. The results were due to be released in the next day.

Any initial impact is expected to be small, as it will be based on only half a day of testing.

The real assessment will come in four days' time, to see if any significant inroads can be made into Beijing's air quality by reducing car numbers.

Of course, the bleakest of all results would be that not much has changed. That would leave Olympic organisers scratching their heads, wondering what it will take to bring blue skies to Beijing in August 2008.

Beijing residents might also wonder why the Government is not planning to give the city breathable air on a permanent basis.