The surge in private car ownership in China—from one million vehicles in 1994 to 16 million in 2004—is “fast eroding the quality of urban life and the efficiency of urban economic activities,” according to a hard-hitting World Bank Working Paper on urban transport released this week.

China: Building Institutions for Sustainable Urban Transport presents a frank and chilling assessment of China’s relentless drive, since the central government declared automobile manufacturing a “pillar industry” in 1994, towards urban gridlock, social exclusion and asphyxiation.

Car ownership is likely to continue increasing apace, with domestic manufacturers cutting their prices in response to WTO-driven reduction of tariffs on imported vehicles (from 100% in 2001 to around 25% now). Business as usual, the report suggests, could see 170 million private cars on China’s roads by 2020, requiring 100 million tonnes of oil equivalent (MTOE) per year and producing 102 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions.

City governments, the report says, are responding by “investing heavily in road capacity” but in a “piecemeal and ad-hoc” way, without a coherent transport strategy. As well as substantial conversion of farmland, road development has involved “dismantling existing bicycle rights-of-way, pedestrian sidewalks, and even rows of roadside trees.”

Automobile manufacturers aside, winners from current urban development patterns are hard to find. The report notes that “Despite rapid growth in private cars, the majority of urban households are car-less and likely to remain so for the next 10-15 years.” For the present they are “victims of the practice that makes way for car traffic at the cost of their once convenient and safe travel environment.”

Moreover, authorities have paid little attention to the needs of rural migrants, who comprise 20-40% of city populations; and the trend to urban sprawl “is accompanied by an overall reduction of mobility quality for almost all income groups.”

Despite all the new roads, peak-hour vehicle speeds in Beijing have declined from 45 km. per hour in 1994 to less than 10 km per hour in 2005, with a similar decline recorded in Shanghai, while Shenzhen reports road traffic accidents as the leading cause of death over each of the last three years.

The solution lies in “the development of an efficient and affordable public transport system,” according to the report, but it finds that “real actions have been far from adequate” despite the fact that “international knowledge about sustainable urban transport is widely available.”

Rather than blaming market-driven growth for the mess, the report identifies “institutional” weaknesses, including decentralisation that assigns excessive expenditure responsibilities to localities, inherent rigidity of planning processes that allows for minimal public participation and monitoring, and policy incentives that still push city leaders towards GDP growth at almost any cost, encouraging them to build roads at breakneck speed to attract inward investors.

To illustrate weak planning and implementation capacity, the report notes that a 20-year Urban Master Plan for Guangzhou was approved by the State Council in 1984, three years after the city government had submitted the plan, but that by 1989 the city had already grown spatially beyond the target limit for 2000.

By way of remedy, the report suggests six priority actions: i) “Redefine the role of the national government in urban transport” ii) “Develop accountability mechanisms and a strengthened local governance structure” iii) “Build up the institutional capacity for strategic planning” iv) “Establish between transport planning and financing” v) “Develop sustainable and transparent financing” vi) “Develop public transport as the centrepiece of urban transport planning”

The working paper can be downloaded in full (31pp) from www.worldbank.org.cn

Meanwhile, a joint United Nations Development Programme and Ministry of Science and Technology project will on June 20 launch three fuel-cell bus units in Beijing. The hydrogen powered, ‘zero emission’ buses, previewed at a conference in Beijing last year, and will go into operation along an 18.2 kilometere route in the north of the capital.

This is one outcome of an eight-year, USD 30 million ‘Demonstration for Fuel-Cell Bus Commercialization in China’project which has received support from private sector companies including DaimlerChrysler, BP, Ballard, and SinoHytec.

Report by Nick Young, June 15 2006