Foreign experts advise Beijing on traffic congestion during Olympics

BEIJING, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- Limit the use of private cars, improve public transport and encourage the use of bicycles to curb traffic congestion during the 2008 Olympics, experts from foreign countries advised Beijing on Friday.

Professor Nigel Wilson, of the civil and environmental engineering department of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said he was "supportive to the limiting of private cars during the Olympic Games", saying that in foreign countries, the method is also adopted during big events, but he was unsure about the approach.

The government planned to keep an average of more than one million cars off the roads to improve traffic flow during the Olympics, said Liu Xiaoming, deputy director of the Beijing Traffic Committee, at the China Planning Network First Urban Transportation Congress

Sharing Wilson's view, Dr. Yoshitsugu Hayashi, dean of the Graduate School of Environmental Studies of Nagoya University, believed the reduction in car use should be achieved not by banning, but through incentives.

"Drivers who don't use their private cars could be given points," he said, "and the points could be exchanged for goods from online shopping."

Dave Wetzel, vice chairman of Transport for London and fellow of the Charted Institute of Logistics and Transport, said private cars were limited in central London by high charges. "Cars going to the central district are charged 16 dollars a day," he said, "so that they could be kept out in a more democratic way than being banned."

Wetzel stressed limiting the use of company cars. "Governmental officials should also be encouraged to use public transportation or ride bicycles," he said, adding that he himself is a bicycle-rider in London.

Matthew Martimo, director of Traffic Engineering with Citilabs, said the bicycle was China's advantage. "Limiting private cars is an idea worth trying but it is just a temporary solution," he said. "The real cause of congestion is high density of people in Beijing and many have cars