Beijing Bans a Million Cars to Fight Smog

Every morning, a small group of middle-aged people gathers at the north gate of Beijing's worker's stadium. They begin their day with dance. Mrs Liu is a regular. She is very happy about the traffic restrictions.

"There is a clear difference," she says. "There are considerably fewer cars on the streets. I feel much better and the air pollution is being reduced. I support these measures. Best would be to reduce traffic by half."

Mrs Liu's words are confirmed at a glance. Traffic is flowing instead of crawling at a torturously slow pace, even in districts which are usually chock-a-block full. The air really does seem better even if there is still an inordinate amount of dust from the countless building sites dotted all over the city.

One million cars banned

Over a third of Beijing's three million cars have been banned from the roads over the next four days. On Friday, only cars with odd number-plates, taxis, police cars and ambulances are allowed out on the roads. On Saturday, it will be even numbers.

But the rule has not been made known to people outside of Beijing. One driver from the neighbouring city of Tianjin had to pay a fine equivalent to about ten euros:

"I knew nothing about it. We just arrived. If I'd known about the rule, I wouldn't have come."

Burden on public transport

80 percent of the cars on Beijing's roads are private vehicles. So this traffic ban is going to be a burden on the capital's bus and train network.

When the traffic ban was announced last week, the vice-head of the Beijing Transport Bureau made a quick calculation:

"According to our estimates," he said. "64 percent of the passengers of the 1.3 million banned cars will use public transport instead. That's about two million single rides. To accommodate this, we will put about seven to eight hundred extra buses into circulation."

Media restrictions

The subway trains are also travelling shorter distances and the trains have more wagons than usual but still users are complaining that there's not enough space.

But these problems are not being discussed in the Beijing media. The state propaganda authorities have reportedly banned journalists from talking about the negative impact of the traffic ban on the public transport system.

But the impact on the air will be measured across the city and reported. Last November, 800,000 cars were banned from the streets of Beijing for three days -- experts found that air pollution had been reduced by 40 percent.