China moving toward greener transit

Land-use planning needed.

Vilas Bhuchar, Jan 10, 11.

China is working to develop a cleaner transportation system in an effort to reduce the congestion and pollution associated with its increasingly urban, car-buying population, according to the National Geographic.

While electric vehicles, which emit lower levels of greenhouse gases and air pollutants than conventional vehicles, are part of the solution, according to Zhong-Ren Peng, who chairs the University of Florida’s Department of Urban and Regional Planning, he adds that “Public transportation is probably more important from the perspective of long-term sustainability issues.”

Peng notes that China has done a lot of work to improve public transportation, including the rapid construction of high-speed railways. However, he says that buses need to use information and communication technologies to make public transit more convenient and help make public transportation “more cool,” according to the story.

Furthermore, land use, real estate, and railway planning need to be integrated so that high-density, mixed-use developments are centered around major transit stations, said Peng in the story:

“People realize the value of proximity to a rail station,” said Peng,” noting that where high-speed rail stations are built, the price of land goes up. “So how do we make it work for people who want that convenience and accessibility?”

Much of China’s intercity high-speed railways are traveling through “vacant land,” where communities can be designed from the get-go around a rail station. Due to the “high cost and long process of purchasing land and relocating existing residents and firms,” said Peng, high-speed rail stations are usually located in suburban areas around a city.

Even in more developed areas, relatively simple adjustments (such as changing the orientation of certain streets near a station and coordinating with the urban transit system), Peng said, can help encourage mass transit ridership, and minimize reliance on personal vehicles. At the same time, “intra-city rail, particularly with good transit-oriented design,” said Peng, “could discourage sprawl.”

While China has a long way to go in greening its transportation system, the country will need to continue to address land use planning, information technology, mass transit development, and cleaner vehicles in order to deal with problems associated with its booming population, including epic traffic jams such as a 10,000-vehicle one that halted more than 60 miles of the Beijing-Zhangjiakou freeway for 10 days last summer, notes the story.

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Photo credit: gefafwisp (flickr, CC)