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To Avoid Olympic Smog, Beijing Limits Traffic
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The city is scheduled to add up to 3,000 more buses by the time the Olympics start, raising the daily capacity for passengers from 12.5 million to 15 million, it said.
A rare 95 percent of buses reached their stops on time on Sunday because the roads were less congested, Xinhua cited Yao Zhenping, assistant to the general manager of the Beijing Public Transport Holdings Group, as saying.
Two new subway lines and an airport rail link opened on Saturday, with the projected number of passengers on all three routes expected to carry 1.1 million people daily during the Olympics.
"It's much faster than a taxi, so it's very good," said Ola Tunamder, who arrived Sunday from Helsinki, Finland, and took the airport train into the city.
And on July 25, special Olympic traffic lanes will begin operating and will stay in place until Sept. 25. The city will set aside 165 miles of roadway on which certified Olympic vehicles will be allowed to move from hotels, Olympic venues and the Athletes' Village. The average speed is expected to be 35 mph.
Experts say the pollution-curbing experiment could still go wrong.
Unpredictable winds could blow pollution into Beijing despite factory shutdowns in the city and five surrounding provinces. Or it could go the other way, with August generally being the month with little wind, potentially allowing pollution to build up.
Also Sunday, Xinhua said that China's civil aviation authorities had begun implementing air traffic control measures to deal with potential emergencies.
Citing Su Langen, an aviation official, the report said that authorities "will maintain closer monitoring of air traffic" but did not give any details.
"They will respond quickly to emergency situations such as terror attacks, hijacking of civil aircraft, and unauthorized entry of no-fly zone," Xinhua said.
