Compared to many other Chinese cities, Beijing has not been outstanding in improving the quality of daily life for its residents. However, last week, the municipal government of Beijing made an extraordinary decision.

In a city that is plagued by hundreds of traffic jams during every peak time, and in which the fastest means of transportation is still a bicycle, Beijing officials have mustered enough courage to announce a major overhaul of the public transit system. The programme starts on New Year's Day.

The local government's plan can now offer a much-needed sense of certainty for the commuters constantly baffled by the increasing mess caused by the city's helpless car boom.

No matter if the reform is a success or not, the planners deserve some praise for their cleverness and guts.

A considerable amount of money, 4 billion yuan (US$500 million), is to be allocated to the city's bus system each year.

For any public service, more financial commitment is better than less, especially when the government has so much in its coffers. Even if all the money was spent on buying the wrong buses and building the wrong roads, there would still be a report on the spending items to the legislative, and this is always better than public money squandered on banquets.

A part of the public-transport funding package is to be used to subsidize bus tickets. Beijing residents can expect to pay a lower fare than they do now for their daily commutes.

This is very important for members of the low-income groups - particularly staff of the service industries and migrant workers. On their wage level, Beijing is quite an expensive city. Any amount of money these workers can save will help them afford to stay in the city.

There are also plans, though it is still to be seen when they will all become realities, for some major bus inter-connection centres to link the inner city with the main satellite towns.

The inconvenience in changing buses in Beijing is obvious for regular commuters. Little has been done for more than a decade, to make it substantially easier for commuters to change from train to the right bus.

If not tackled from now, bus connections will soon become an even greater headache, and will become an efficiency-killer of the city's economy, considering the city is building several subways at the same time.

Even if the city's buses continue to move at a snail speed - because there is no way to control people's and various government offices' buying enthusiasm for new cars the convenience in changing buses, and changing between buses and subways, should not be compromised.

Having said all this, however, I have strong doubts that Beijing's bus system reform will solve commuters' all problems.

It is a rather curious phenomenon, in fact, that the city still does not have a unified public transit board answering directly to the mayor or even the premier's office.

Buses are important, of course, and will remain so for Beijing but subways and other forms of rail transport, expressways and even air travel, are gaining their importance more rapidly.

Beijing's traffic development is still waiting for an all-round solution.

(China Daily 12/11/2006 page4)