Fueling a recipe for disaster

By Wang Ru (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-11-06 11:39

Early last month, a fight between an African American woman and a Chinese woman on a minibus in San Francisco was recorded on camera.

The clip was soon put on Youtube and attracted more than a million views. The scuffle occurred between two women from different minority groups in the US. But as a journalist living in Beijing, I am numb to such fights.

Search "fight in Beijing bus" online and you will find countless cases including video clips shot by cellphones that illustrate such disturbing behavior. Watching those scenes will frustrate our deepest beliefs in social harmony and humanity.

So who is to blame for such behavior? A few of my experiences may offer some explanation.

I was waiting in the cold one recent evening in front of a queue at a bus station near the World Trade Center, at the heart of Beijing's fast-developing Central Business District, where countless white-collar workers head back to their homes in the east of the city.

True to form, the bus finally emerged from the traffic congestion half an hour later. The queue immediately disappeared, replaced by a maddening crowd rushing to the bus door to board the vehicle. There were two employees of the bus company responsible for maintaining order, but they were unable to stop the chaos as usual.

While I was struggling to get on the bus, a number of other buses, almost empty, passed by toward the same direction. I was finally pushed onto the bus by the mob to become part of a sardine-packed journey.

Overloading on buses is a common site in the country's large cities. In 1980s, the Ministry of Construction released a regulation allowing city buses to each take eight passengers a square meter. However, the move ran counter to traffic laws marking out rules on overloading.

Even as packed buses continue to pose a danger to traffic safety, some bus companies forbid bus drivers to refuse the passengers while traffic police can ignore obligations and rarely fine overloaded buses.

Since bus fees were cut in Beijing in 2006, the capital's 22,000 public buses have become a crucial mode of transport for a population that continues to grow. The network carries more than 14 million passenger trips daily, four times more than that of the subway.

Experts point out that the utility of bus routes is poor and that bus companies fall short on managing and adjusting their routes. Others have also suggested that the inefficient bus routes also push more people to buy cars - which can lead to more traffic jams and infringement of designated bus lines by private motorists to feed a vicious cycle.

Inevitably, overloaded buses then fuel frequent quarrels and fights among impatient passengers.