They probably need to have a staged approach at removing the subsidies, – depending on how much is actually subsidized, create a short term (2 years or so) plan of slowly chipping away at the subsidies until poof. Gone.

You’re thinking in a good direction! I mostly agree with you, although I think there are other less imaginitive low-hanging fruit. (Like designing things right the first time?)

Re: your suggestions: I can tell you what the status is for each of these!

1. Curb Auto-sales by instituting a license plate quota system
The national policy is actually to promote car sales, with the policy goal of economic development. (“One Car per Family Policy”) Thus, from a purely policy perspective, license-quota system is a no-go in Beijing, which is under direct scrutiny of the party leaders.

However, Shanghai does this. They even public state that their policies are inspired by Singapore. Their policies seem effective. But recently they have grown complacent; relaxed policies; allowed veh. population growth.

2. Introduce Congestion Zones
Highly theoretical, but with some support. My department (and probably other ministries) are studying international best practices, and will be observing the effectivess of different measures during the Olympics.

Heh. that makes me sound important. (I’m actually a level-5 peon.) My strategy here would actually be to forget the studies, and try to get politicians from those successful cities to come here to talk to the politicians here, about HOW congestion charging can actually be ‘popular’.

3. Introduce Public Light Buses
Yeah. You’ve touched on the issues of our highly regimented views as to what IS transit. Buses in the west are so big because the DRIVER is actually the largest cost component; size is marginally cheap and service quality is not a driver even in the few cases where there is competition. And even on the edges where it MIGHT make sense, the market isn’t large enough to bring the cost of a bus down for budget-strapped agencies. (A small bus costs ~ $750,000, a large bus ~ $1,250,000 )

There COULD be a strong market here. But .. that will require some imagination on the part of someone in charge.

4. Introduce Carpool Lanes
This has been studied. Once. For Chang’an blvd.

Related: There does seem to be a very strong commuter carpooling culture, anyways (like the US in the 60′s?). The Beijing Committee in charge of these things looks the other way, because it’s technically illegal to exchange money.

5. remove fuel subsidies
China NEEDS to do this. On this subject I am also in the peanut gallery, but WHOLY CRAP was this a bad idea.

While I know some stuff about… stuff, I don’t really think about it much. The big picture for me is CO2, rather than pollution or traffic.

Point to ponder:
The chinese are projected to buy 100 million new cars in the next 12 years (locally, will double beijing’s 3 million).

I can think of a few ways to meaningfully affect that statistic ( fun ways! in the near term! ), and I have a few really interesting studies. If anybody’s interested I’m happy to chat.

Darius

darius.roberts@every-body’s-favorite-google-mail-application.com

John, good point about the light buses potentially being a hard sale, but I think it’s simply a matter of guanxi.

Melanie, True true – but in order for people to follow the rules, the police need to do their jobs better. Beijing already has a decent automated traffic camera system, but they need to up the sensitivity, like an airport metal detector.. if you know what I mean…

Ben, I haven’t spoken to Darius about traffic stuff, next time I see him, I’ll be sure to. Regarding pollution, I do think so – but, 3 needs to work in conjunction with #2 (the conjestion zone fees) and an overall de-subsidization of fuel – the government is subsidizing fuel costs quite a lot – I’ve heard figures that go up to 50% of fuel is subsidized. If the remove that, that’s going to hit people where it matters most – the bank account. All the sudden, your car consumption costs go up 100%. That’s a big big jump for the average new driver. And you’re right, car pool lanes will be hard to police, not to mention educating people about them…

Chris, True, I’ve seen the private ones too. First, get rid of the private ones. They are death traps, and probably don’t pay any tax on income. The gov. needs to take a firm stance on this stuff. The great thing about the “light buses” in HK is there is no way you could fit more than 18 people in them! There’s no standing room even.. They are faster at accelerating – for instance, when they get going after picking up/dropping people. That’s a big problem with these big buses on the ring roads…

Some of the ideas presented in this comment, i.e. removing the fuel subsidies, will probably cause people to revolt.. to it probably needs to be a controlled removal. Also, any public transportation, i.e. buses, taxis, should still have the subsidies for obvious reasons (I for one wouldn’t want to see the taxi fee go up to 4RMB/Km!)

nice speech. Today on boingboing I found this link: a speech by an MIT professor about how to give a good speech: http://overstated.net/2008/01/30/patrick-winston-how-to-speak

Have you chatted with Darius at the BLUG about the traffic topic? His job, afaiu, relates directly.

I think ideas 1 and 2 are gold. 3 (light buses): do you figure total pollution will increase or decrease?
4: doubt it would work. Drivers don’t follow the road rules here at all in my limited experience. Why would they follow carpool lane rules?

Cheers
Ben