'Beijing's Traffic Scheme for the 2008 Summer Olympics'

Beijing's Traffic Scheme for the 2008 Summer Olympics

By Tony Stark at 07/22/08 06:09

Last Sunday, Beijing officials started its ambitious attempt to clear the Chinese sky out of pollution before the Olympic Games starts on August 8-24. The traffic scheme program will last for two months, clearly indicating that the Chinese government is only concern for the coming Olympics, and not for a life long solution to reduce their pollution problems.

The traffic program sees reducing cars on the road for the next two months by regulating the ones that can drive on their car and the ones that cannot. This is done by having an odd-even traffic scheme. If your car's plate ends with an odd number, you can drive today, but sorry you cannot for tomorrow. I can't believe that they are just implementing this now. A relatively smaller and poorer country in South East Asia have this traffic program for more than a decade now!

The Odd-Even scheme is good for China because they have a large country, and that scheme will ensure half the number of cars in their country traveling the day road. In smaller countries such as the Philippines, the odd-even scheme have been replaced with another program. It is called Color Coding (though actually it should be called Number Coding). Color Coding is banning specific cars for traveling the day road. Cars with plate numbers ending with 1 & 2 are banned for Mondays, 3 & 4 on Tuesdays, 5 & 6 on Wednesdays, 7 & 8 on Thursdays and 9 & 0 for Fridays.

Now China on the other hand is just starting to have this traffic program just for the sake of the Olympics. They fear that some of countries will not send their athletes for the fear of pollution. They are also planning to shutdown factories for the time of the Olympics.

I have been in Beijing in 2002 with my family and I noticed how bad their air was. I mean, we also have a polluted country but Beijing's went hundred folds! China has the world's most polluted places. But since China is now becoming a super power, I guess they do not have an excuse not to do every way they can to stop the pollution that's ravaging their beautiful country.

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