China's urban infrastructure not enough for commuters: Report

Six lane highways, countless flyovers, high speed metro trains and long caterpillar buses are part of China's world class infrastructure, but urban Chinese still complain of lengthy delays in commuting to work due to traffic hold ups.

Many residents in the capital spend up to an hour commuting to work every day, a new report says.

Academicians warned that the lengthy transportation times in many cities showed that the "development of traffic systems is lagging behind urbanisation" even though China poured billions of dollars to built up world class infrastructure specially in the urban areas.

More than 22 million people are living in the capital city which exceeded the original plan of the municipal government to contain the total population to less than 18 million by 2020, the Chinese Academy of Sciences said in a recent report.

The total number of cars registered in the first four months of 2010 rose sharply from 23.8 per cent from a year earlier to 2,48,000, according to the Beijing municipal taxation office.

The city expected to have five million cars on the roads by the end of the year. Besides the highlighted urbanisation problems, Beijing has seen a massive influx of migrants who cram the metro system and vehicles that paralyse the road system.

"Spending half an hour is not too bad but could still be improved to catch up with the international standard," said a senior researcher with the academy, Niu Wenyuan who conducted the study told state run China Daily.

Residents from 17 Chinese cities, out of a total 50 cities analysed, spend more than 30 minutes in traffic, according to the report. In his report called "2010 Report on New Chinese Model of Urbanisation" Nu said China's urbanisation has created comparatively serious bottlenecks in traffic flow.

Li Kang, a 28-year-old Beijing local, said her home is only five km away from her workplace in Guomao (international trade center), but it takes a taxi 40 minutes to "creep there" because of increasing umbers of cars.

"Riding a bus to the subway station is even more time-consuming. When I just decided to switch back to a bike lately, the news said that air pollution is unbearable in the city," she said.

Many netizens claiming to spend far more than 52 minutes commuting suggested "strict traffic control that was once employed during the 2008 Olympic Games should reactivated", Li said.

Calculations by the Chinese Academy of Sciences found that Beijing tops 50 major cities in commuting times - 52 minutes on average, state run China Daily reported on Monday. The story is the same in other cities of China as southern economic hub of Guangzhou, the eastern financial centre of Shanghai and the booming southern city of Shenzhen followed the capital closely with 48, 47 and 46 minutes of travel time, respectively.