[sustran] World Car Free Day made official in Shanghai?

Eric Britton eric.britton at ecoplan.org
Mon Dec 4 15:52:20 JST 2006


World Car Free Day made official in Shanghai?


Carfreeposterchinashanghai.gifWe're a bit confused here: We just read a
report <http://news.163.com/06/1203/05/31D4NQ9F0001124J.html>  (in
Chinese) that says 70 mayors of Chinese cities have signed agreements
that make World Car Free Day -- September 22 -- somewhat official.
However, it seems that Beijing tried
<http://english.people.com.cn/200509/23/eng20050923_210246.html>  this
in 2005 in an attempt to meet "blue sky" goals. Supposedly Chengdu was
the <http://env.people.com.cn/GB/41909/42116/3720244.html>  first
Chinese city back in 2001 to try to do something for WCFD. After the
signing of this agreement, most of China's big cities, such as
Chongqing, Tianjin, Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou, etc. are on board. Not
only are they going to encourage more people to walk, bike and use
public transit, they might even carve out a no-car
<http://news.163.com/06/1129/04/312OPJE60001124J.html>  zone in parts of
the cities. 

According to the statistics in this report
<http://auto.sina.com.cn/news/2005-09-22/0804141709.shtml> , the World
Bank estimates that air pollution costs about 5 percent of China's GDP,
and according to a Chinese economist, traffic congestion in Beijing
causes a loss of 1.1 RMB per day or 400 RMB per year to every Beijing
resident.

We don't know what interesting factoids and statistics are available for
Shanghai (they no doubt exist), but we've been quite embarrassed
recently when we thought we could make it from upper Jing'an district to
the Huaihai Lu district in about 10 or 15 minutes -- we've always
underestimated the time it used to take, as if our brains were stuck
back in 2000. Or it was just wishful thinking along the lines of, "Oh, I
won't be that late." We know. The first step to solving the problem is
admitting you have one.

Back to the topic -- we can't remember if anything happened, even on a
small scale, in Shanghai. Does anyone remember as far back as September
22?

Poster from webstrade.it
<http://www.webstrade.it/news/07-car-free/poster.htm> .

 

Posted by Peijin Chen
<http://www.shanghaiist.com/staff.php#shang_peijin>  in News: Shanghai
<http://www.shanghaiist.com/archives/news_shanghai/>  | Link
<http://www.shanghaiist.com/archives/2006/12/03/world_car_free.php>  |
Comments
<http://www.shanghaiist.com/archives/2006/12/03/world_car_free.php#comme
nts>  (2) |  <javascript:void(0)> Recommend this! Loading...| 

 

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