CPPCC member Cheng Ping: The public transportation time should be controlled within 1.5 times of the car

Beijing News Express (reporter Pei Jianfei) Cheng Ping, a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and former safety director of the Ministry of Transport, submitted a proposal on vigorously promoting the construction of green transportation this year, and she believes that in order to guide citizens to choose green travel methods, governments at all levels should continuously improve the bus travel environment, protect the right of way of public transportation, improve the speed of bus operation, and control the public transportation service time within 1.5 times of cars.

In addition, Cheng Ping also suggested that it is necessary to study and introduce car travel demand constraints and guidance policies, in addition to exploring ways to reduce car travel willingness through economic levers such as congestion charges and parking fees, insurance and tax policies can also be given preferential policies according to the downtime or annual mileage.

Urban road planning and design should fully consider the needs of "people"

With the rapid development of China's economy and society, cars have rapidly entered the family. It is understood that by the end of 2019, the number of cars in the country reached 260 million, of which the number of private cars exceeded 200 million. With the surge in car ownership, traffic congestion has become increasingly prominent, causing a lot of economic losses, energy losses and environmental pollution. In September 2019, the CENTRAL Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council issued the Outline for the Construction of a Transportation Powerhouse, which clearly proposed to "build a safe, convenient, efficient, green and economically modern comprehensive transportation system".

As a traffic industry insider, Cheng Ping brought a proposal on vigorously promoting the construction of green transportation at this year's two sessions. "Due to the shortage of land resources in China, and the expansion of roads is far from keeping up with the growth rate of car ownership." Under the conditions of high population density and insufficient land resources, intensive and green travel is an inevitable choice for the development of green transportation. The Ministry of Transport has also been vigorously promoting green travel, adhering to the priority development of public transportation, and taking multiple measures to control urban congestion. Cheng Ping believes that the key concept of green travel is to shift from "road for car" to "road for people". In particular, the planning and design of roads around cities or cities should fully consider the needs of "people", if only consider improving the speed of automobile operation and increasing the capacity of traffic, it will inevitably "encourage" more people to choose cars to travel, and cause traffic congestion.

Explore congestion charges in areas with greater traffic congestion pressure

"Bus travel is a green, intensive way of travel, but there are objective reasons why everyone has fewer choices now." Cheng Ping told reporters that the long time, the general environment, the low accuracy of time, and the inconvenience of transfer are common diseases of some urban buses, which also causes the status quo that citizens are not willing to travel by bus.

Therefore, she suggested that governments at all levels should formulate an evaluation index system and assessment methods to guide green travel. Such as the average operating speed of ground buses (or the running time of unit distance), rail transit congestion, the convenience and comfort of public transportation, the proportion of walking and cycling lanes, and the operating environment and other indicator systems: establish a green transportation construction star evaluation system (which can be divided into regions or travel modes), etc., to strengthen the policy orientation of green travel.

In addition, Cheng Ping also wrote in the proposal that it is necessary to study and introduce car travel demand constraints and guidance policies, constrain and guide car travel demand, in order to hedge against urban traffic problems such as congestion and parking difficulties caused by the relaxation of purchase restrictions. For example, the study of the introduction of shared lanes or allow carpooling vehicles to use bus lanes; such as giving insurance and tax policy guidance according to the time of suspension or annual mileage; in areas with greater traffic congestion pressure, explore ways to reduce the willingness of cars to travel by collecting economic levers such as congestion charges and parking fees.

Improve public transportation services and improve citizens' willingness to travel by bus

"Public transportation is an important part of green travel and the main measure to solve urban traffic congestion. However, at present, there are problems such as imperfect planning and layout of public transportation routes, unscientific, slow operation speed, and low punctuality rate, resulting in reluctance to choose bus travel. Cheng Ping suggested that under the concept of giving priority to the development of public transportation, relevant policies and regulations on bus priority should be introduced to guide the priority choice of public transportation.

Cheng Ping said that relevant facilities must also be improved, such as ensuring the right of way of buses through measures such as bus lanes and bus priority signals, improving the speed and capacity of bus operation, and controlling the public transportation service time within 1.5 times that of cars. In addition, it is necessary to improve the convenient connection between public transportation and other modes of travel. On the basis of increasing the construction of rail transit and bus networks, we will do a good job in the construction of connection facilities such as pedestrian network connections around stations, P+R parking lots and B+R bicycle (shared bicycle) parking spots.

"Some foreign cities have a higher share of bus travel, because their bus environmental conditions and degree of informatization are higher than ours, and at the same time, there is not such a high degree of congestion, so citizens are more willing to choose the way of bus travel." Cheng Ping told reporters that at present, all localities need to build smart transportation as soon as possible - smart bus, using big data and artificial intelligence and other scientific and technological means to improve the level of bus route planning and layout, optimize station settings, scientifically dispatch vehicles, release real-time bus operation information, and improve the punctuality rate of bus operation.

Beijing News reporter Pei Jianfei

Edited by Fan Yijing Proofreader Wei Zhuo