Beijing's increasingly clogged roads and polluted air are problems that the government will have to resolve in time for the 2008 Olympic Games, the mayor said Wednesday, expressing confidence that the goals will be met.
BEIJING — Beijing's increasingly clogged roads and polluted air are problems that the government will have to resolve in time for the 2008 Olympic Games, the mayor said Wednesday, expressing confidence that the goals will be met.
"In Beijing, we have a salient traffic problem," Mayor Wang Qishan told a group of visiting American newspaper editors.
Government figures show that the capital added new vehicles at the rate of about 1,000 a day last year, giving the city a total of 2.6 million vehicles, which has resulted in severe congestion and a growing smog problem.
Additionally, Wang said, making drivers and pedestrians follow road rules are a tough task, especially when car-owners are coming up with increasingly sly ways of avoiding being caught.
Some make small changes to their license plates to deceive traffic cameras or use special reflective surfaces so that they are too shiny to be seen when photographed, he said.
Chinese Olympics organizers have said that increased parking fees have been imposed to discourage driving. Officials have also widened roads, built new highways and improved public transport to help ease the situation.
"We have confidence we can do it," Wang said.
He said the government has also cut back on using coal as a source of heat and updated emissions standards.
The mayor, however, said natural factors had caused most of the problems, blaming sandstorms from the northwest and a perennial water shortage.
"The environmental problems, the air problems are produced by industrialization but there are some climactic factors as well," Wang said.
Source: Associated Press
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