Car ban in capital 'not enough'
Beijing needs to take up to twice as many cars off the streets as it did in an August traffic control trial, to ensure decent air quality during next year's Olympics, said a member of the panel of scientists advising the city government on the issue.
Zhu Tong, an environmentalist with Peking University, also called for more flexible rules for the ban - based on variation of energy efficiency among the capital's 3 million-plus cars, instead of an indiscriminate odd-or-even registration plate number policy adopted in the August tests.
'From a scientist's point of view, I think that we need to take at least 2 million cars off the streets [so that air quality will be up to the standards] and I and my colleagues have already proposed it to the authorities,' said Professor Zhu.
'But since a car ban of that scale would impact on the daily life of a large number of residents, the government apparently needs time to weigh the upside and downside of the measure before making a final decision.'
Professor Zhu's remarks came after Beijing authorities issued a detailed report at the weekend on the reduction in air pollution levels as a result of the car ban. The tests, which took around 1.3 million vehicles off the roads each day over the four-day trial period, were intended as a rehearsal for emergency measures proposed to raise air quality to a tolerable level for next year's Olympics.
The report said the car ban saw the total weight of airborne pollutants detected in the capital's atmosphere over the trial period drop by 5,815 tonnes, a fall of between 15 and 20 per cent. A further breakdown shows a daily 20 per cent drop in the concentration of ground-level nitrogen oxide and fall of a similar size in the levels of carbon monoxide detected.
