New Traffic Scheme in Beijing

After two months of being pampered with clean air and less traffic, Beijing motorists were plagued with traffic jams on the first day off of the odd-even scheme during the Games.  Air quality deteriorated badly that government officials implemented a new traffic scheme starting yesterday.

I remember talking to my friend who has a car about the traffic scheme in Manila and how it would be good if it was implemented here before my European trip.  Lo and behold, they implemented it with some revisions.  It seems like they will be giving it a trial run till April 10 of next year.  The number traffic scheme would ban cars whose last digit on their car plates matches the number they’ve selected from 6 am to 9 pm on certain days.  Weekends are excluded on the traffic scheme.  They devised whose off as follow: 1 and 6 on Monday, 2 and 7 on Tuesday, 3 and 8 on Wednesday, 4 and 9 on Thursday , and 5 and 0 on Friday.

Violators will be “verbally warned” in the first week and pay RMB 100 on the next instance.  Emergency support, taxis and buses are excluded in this ban.

Well.. it seems like it’s working as traffic is better than before the holidays.  Air quality was bad yesterday and my Russian seat mate on the plane even commented that it’s “Smoke”.  Hahaha!  I didn’t say that!