Congestion fee not the solution

Curbing the number of government cars should be the first step for reducing urban traffic congestion in China, says an article in Dazhong Daily. The following is an excerpt:

At the forum on the scientific usage of Olympic legacies in Beijing, head of the Beijing Transportation Research Center said Beijing will map out measures to reduce or remit the taxes levied on small cars. Some attendees also suggested traffic closures should be introduced in the center of the downtown and congestion fees be charged in due time.

Once again, we heard of the congestion fees. Of course, the attendees have their own reasons for their suggestion. Currently, cities in the UK and South Korea have been charging congestion fees. Among them, Seoul of South Korea started to charge this fee as early as 1996. As South Korean experts said, the average car speed has been raised by 136 percent upon introduction of the charge. Therefore, they said the policy of congestion fees is successful in Seoul. But the problem is that it may not be suitable for China.

It's noted that government cars in South Korea are fewer than in China. Unlike South Korea, China has a much larger number of government vehicles. Conservatively speaking, there are about 3.5 million government cars in China and the expenditures on them reach 300 billion yuan ($44 billion) every year, surpassing the sum of China's annual educational and medical expenditures. More importantly, government car users will not hesitate to pay congestion fees at all since they can get reimbursed from the government.

Moreover, the traffic conditions in London have not improved till now despite the 800 million pounds of congestion fees that have already been collected by the city. The administrative expenditures have accounted for the majority of the collected congestion fees, resulting in less expenditures on addressing the public transportation system.

London failed to tackle congestion even though it has fewer government cars than Chinese cities. So, it's nearly impossible for congestion fees to achieve success for Chinese cities since they have more government cars.

In fact, as some experts pointed out earlier, a more popular method of tackling the congestion problem in the world is by controlling the volume of government cars. For example, Seoul earlier had 2.78 million government cars; to solve traffic congestion and parking difficulty, the Seoul municipal government introduced a government car reshuffle. When the Seoul municipal government had the number of its cars reduced to only 47, the city also waved goodbye to traffic congestion. So, we can see traffic problems can't be solved only by charging congestion fees.

In view of this, we should first of all control the number of China's government cars if we really want to contain the urban traffic pressure.

(China Daily 10/15/2008 page8)