In anticipation of the impending Olympics, Beijing’s subway has undergone a series of major changes, documented in this series of photographs. With a total of five lines totaling 140 kilometers of track, Beijing plans to add three more lines this year to extend coverage to 200 km.
Shanghai - Cycles from Lrock on Vimeo.
I haven’t had a chance to see this elegantly shot film, but I still thought it would be appropriate for me to share it with you.
Click here to view the film makers site.
And click here for AO Scott’s review in The New York Times.
Photo by padawan.
Dubai: Air quality declines as number of cars rises [Business 24-7]
China: Car owners to be compensated for driving ban during Olympics [Gaurdian]
China: Marathon record holder wont run in China because of pollution [Daily Mail]
United States: Americans learn bikes cut costs and improve fitness [Reuters]
General: Plug-in cars could increase pollution [Detroit Free Press]
China’s Green Beat, is a neat bilingual blog I stumbled upon the other day, written by John Romankiewicz, an American Fulbright scholar currently living in Beijing, and Zhao Xiangyu, a Chinese citizen from Heilongjiang, a province in the northern part of the country. Check out the above video for a comical take on serious challenge: motorization in the Chinese capital.
Read more about Beijing’s metro, BRT system, Olympic bid, and weather problems.
The International Herald Tribune has put together this interesting video together on the building boom in Shanghai, which is now one of the fastest growing cities in the world.
A miasma of soot and smog sits over Beijing. Photo by +212.
“Should I run behind a bus and breathe in the exhaust? Should I train on the highway during rush hour? Is there any way to acclimate myself to pollution?” These are just a sampling of the strange questions that exercise physiologist for the United States Olympic Committee Randy Wilber has fielded from American athletes anxious to turn out a top-notch performance in Beijing this August, according to a recent New York Times article.
According to Chinese officials, such worries are unfounded. They believe that Beijing will boast blue skies during this summer’s Olympics, when China will openly flex its superpower muscles for the entire world to admire. Unfortunately, Beijing’s plans for creating blue skies rely on a tremendous, temporary green washing of the city – drastic limits on vehicle use and factory closings.
The New York Times article points out that pollution levels in Beijing typically reach five times the World Health Organization standards for safety. Athletes competing in Olympic test events last summer reported contracting respiratory infections and coughing up black mucus. If China’s temporary fixes don’t produce blue skies in Beijing, athletes’ bodies’ may react to extreme air pollution levels by reducing air intake, leading to oxygen debt and cramps. Athletes may also experience allergic reactions. In the worst-case scenario, extreme pollution may lead to heart attacks in even the fittest of athletes. Read the rest of this entry »
Photo by keso of Flickr.
I was on the Wired Blog today and came across an article about Beijing’s ambitious plan to create one of the world’s largest metros, nearly twice as big as the one in Moscow and just edging out London’s vast underground network. A few weeks back I posted an entertaining video about a hard-hat wearing journalist who tests out the new metro, as well as Beijing’s new Bus Rapid Transit system. But I must admit that the Wired piece is a little bit more helpful when it come to the facts and figures. Here’s some of the interesting things it has to say:
Even with all this construction, it’s still probably not enough.
Traffic in Beijing on a normal day. Photo by 2 dogs from Flickr.
During their annual holiday, Chinese workers participate in one of the largest human migrations in history, with hundreds of millions of city-dwellers returning to rural areas to visit family and friends who still live in the hinterlands of this rapidly urbanizing country. Because of Chinese laws, workers have no say when they take vacation, but the Chinese government does, setting aside three weeks each year for holidays, periods when factories shut down and workers return home or go on vacation. During the Chinese New Year holiday, which runs from Jan 14 to February 22, it is estimated that as many as two billion passenger trips take place, using 700,000 thousand buses, three hundred extra trains, not to mention the skyrocketing number of private cars now in circulation.
Because of the shear number of people living in China, combined with the law mandating that Chinese workers take the same vacation days, congestion, crowds, and chaos have become a hallmark of Chinese vacations. In fact, the San Francisco Chronicle reported earlier this week that crowding and congestion have become such problems that the state is considering changing its vacation laws so that workers don’t all vacation at the same time. This would be a welcome measure; after all, who wants to sit in traffic while on vacation?
Via Smart Growth Around America, this video of a hard-hitting, hardhat-wearing journalist who goes underground to explore Beijing’s new subway line and later comes out again to examine the city’s new bus rapid transit line, provides a good sense of what’s going on in Beijing with respect to mass transit. If you don’t have time to watch the whole video, here are a few of its more informative facts:
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