China's capital city can learn from Seoul as Beijing aims to tackle its increasingly severe traffic congestion, a World Bank specialist said Tuesday.
The Beijing municipal government will limit the issuance of new car license plates to 240,000 for full 2011, or 20,000 per month, and implement harsh traffic control measures, such as increased parking fees.
Attributing the problem to China's earlier push for developing the country's auto industry, Liu Zhi, lead infrastructure specialist at the World Bank's Beijing office, said Beijing should adopt demand-side controls as the South Korean capital city did.
"Seoul, the capital city of South Korea, has gone through a similar problem," he said in an article released by the World Bank. "Today, Seoul's traffic congestion problem is not yet over. But the situation is well under control, thanks to its world class public transport system and numerous on-going measures to control car use and promote safe walking and bicycling."
To alleviate traffic congestion, Seoul first opted for subway construction and introduced a network of dedicated bus lanes and a peak-hour congestion charge system for the two key tunnels leading to its central area, Liu explained.
He also added that the South Korean government went on to increase gasoline taxes and road user charges in 1997, while continuously raising parking fees at public parking facilities and reducing the required number of parking spaces in the new commercial and office buildings in the central city.
"With these came the most dramatic action in 2003 when the current South Korean President Lee Myung-bak was the mayor of Seoul," he said.
The city, then, demolished a six-kilometer elevated highway built above the Cheonggyecheon, a stream running through the center of Seoul. Lee led the restoration of the previously cement-covered stream and built a bus rapid transit line along it.
"The only comparable action in China is probably Shanghai's turning the Nanjing Road into a pedestrian shopping street," Liu said.
The World Bank expert emphasized introducing both the non-pricing and pricing controls of vehicle ownership and use in congested cities is necessary to create the right incentive for car users to shift to other modes of transport.