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Most urban Chinese say traffic jam haunts their cities

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2009-06-16 19:41

BEIJING - Nearly 80 percent of the 15,217 urban Chinese said in an online poll that traffic jam haunts their cities during rush hours, a survey by the China Youth Daily showed.

Those polled, all aged 20-40, are scattered in almost all Chinese provinces and municipalities, the newspaper reported Tuesday. About 42 percent of them complained about crowded underground lines and buses.

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Hu Siji, a professor on transport management in Beijing Jiaotong University, told Xinhua Tuesday that the main reason for traffic jam in cities is the high number of people and cars.

Driven by better job opportunities and lives in the cities, China's urban population surged to 607 million by the end of 2008, an increase of 32 percent over 2000, according to a report released by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences on Monday.

For example, Beijing, the nation's capital with some 18 million residents, has long been known among the Chinese as the "capital of traffic jam."

The city has around three million cars on the streets every day. Its eight underground lines and 25,000 buses are jammed like sardines during rush hours.

Those surveyed suggested flexible work hours, more underground lines and buses, and less use of private cars as solutions.

Currently, Beijing has seven more underground lines under construction and six more being planned.

Since the odd-even plate number ban imposed in last year's Olympics, the capital has forbidden its private cars to run off the streets for one day each week based on the last number of their plates.

In another effort, the municipal government said earlier this month that it would encourage flexible work hours and even online offices in "government departments and all companies with suitable conditions." But it did not say when the plan would be applied.