{"id":6631,"date":"2019-05-30T23:31:05","date_gmt":"2019-05-30T23:31:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/guangzhougrt.com\/?page_id=6631"},"modified":"2019-05-31T14:33:41","modified_gmt":"2019-05-31T14:33:41","slug":"traffic-situation-of-guangzhou-municipality","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/guangzhougrt.com\/?page_id=6631&lang=en","title":{"rendered":"Traffic Situation of Guangzhou Municipality"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[vc_row][vc_column width=&#8221;1\/2&#8243;][vc_single_image image=&#8221;6565&#8243; img_size=&#8221;full&#8221;][\/vc_column][vc_column width=&#8221;1\/2&#8243;][vc_column_text]With the sustained rapid economic and social development progress of Guangzhou, and the consequential significant rise of disposable income of its expanding population, there has been continuous increase of automobile purchases and car ownership, resulting in an escalating trend of traffic congestion in the central city area. According to\u00a0official\u00a0statistics, from\u00a0August 15, 2007\u00a0when Guangzhou\u2019s car ownership passed the one-millionth mark,\u00a0this number had exceeded 2.5\u00a0million by 2013, an increase of 1.5 times over 6 years [1]. Five years prior to the\u00a0policy limiting automobile registration, Guangzhou\u2019s car ownership level was already at 90 vehicles per 1000 population with an annual growth rate of 22.1%\u00a0[2],\u00a0Although the\u00a0vehicle registration limitation has helped in slowing the\u00a0excessive growth of\u00a0new\u00a0private cars, the huge car ownership situation in Guangzhou continues to impose enormous traffic pressure on the roads. (A 2015\u2019s national survey of\u00a0car ownership in\u00a0major\u00a0cities found Guangzhou\u2019s car ownership to be 2.695 million, ranked 6<sup>th<\/sup> amongst major cities nationwide [15].) Guangzhou city is thus in urgent need of outward expansion to relieve excessive agglomeration of population and traffic in the city center. Since 2009, under the combined effects of various factors, average evening peak hours\u2019 car traffic speed has dropped to 18.7km\/h along the main downtown roads of Guangzhou [2].\u00a0\u00a0Despite significant expansion of MRT systems with their effective service of public travel, traffic congestion had by 2013 extended to most parts of the central city areas, with road saturation rate reaching 0.9 on average for the main roads. It is already a norm for morning and evening peak hours\u2019 traffic in Guangzhou\u2019s downtown roads to drop to an average speed of 20km\/h or less on work days [3]. Guangzhou traffic situation data released in the &#8220;Guangzhou Transportation Development White Paper&#8221; of October 2013 showed the root cause of congestion in downtown Guangzhou as the limited vehicle carrying capacity of the roads. The daily carrying capacity within the 10 districts of Guangzhou Municipality can only accommodate 1.65 million vehicle-trips, while that for the central city area is at an even lower level of one million vehicle-trips [1]. Increasing competition for limited road transportation resources has thus inevitably resulted in Guangzhou City\u2019s road traffic congestion.[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=&#8221;1\/2&#8243;][vc_column_text]The 2010 Census found the following data of pertinence on the severity of Guangzhou\u2019s traffic congestion: the\u00a0four central districts\u00a0of Yuexiu, Liwan, Haizhu and Tianhe\u00a0within the older Guangzhou township area\u00a0have an average\u00a0population density of\u00a027,531\u00a0people\/km<sup>2<\/sup>. In particular, Yuexiu District\u00a0has a population density 52,834\u00a0people\/ km<sup>2<\/sup>\u00a0[16], putting it 4th highest amongst the world&#8217;s\u00a0urban\u00a0areas.\u00a0(For comparison, the top three ranking areas are: Shanghai\u00a0Hongkou\u00a0District\u00a0at 36306, Manhattan of New York City at 26653, and Zone 1\u00a0of London at 27100 people\/km<sup>2<\/sup>\u00a0[17]). It\u00a0is conceivable that\u00a0over the five years since the 2010 Census,\u00a0there has been further intensification of population in these central districts due to Guangzhou\u2019s continuing growth, with the city-ward population shifts facilitated by the completion and running of more high-speed rails and MRT networks into Guangzhou. \u00a0In order to promote\u00a0the travel and migration of the central zones\u2019 residents\u00a0to\u00a0the periphery areas, the development of high efficiency advanced transportation linkages between the city center and the outskirt areas is becoming a pressing necessity.\u00a0\u00a0Meanwhile, in the eastern zone, the enlarged Huangpu District after its 2015 merger with the Luogang District now covers an area of\u00a0484 km<sup>2<\/sup>\u00a0with a relative sparse population of 880,000\u00a0[18], which is only 1818\u00a0people\/km<sup>2<\/sup>.\u00a0The contrast depicts clearly that, while the over-concentration of population in the central city\u00a0is bringing about tremendous pressure on the community and constraining the municipality\u2019s public transportation resources, the situation can be relieved by appropriate \u201cEastern Expansion\u201d with the needed connectivity measures in place. Hence it can be expected that such an \u201cEastern Expansion\u201d is an inevitable physical aspect of Guangzhou\u2019s economic growth and development\u00a0strategy. \u00a0To facilitate the associated population distribution and their travel needs, a priority focus should be the\u00a0study and implementation of public\u00a0transport\u00a0facility upgrades\u00a0including but not limited to road system optimization and subway MRT extensions. \u00a0This unique challenge poses an opportunity for the pioneering development of a state-of-the-art public transport modality that can effectually enable the \u201cEastern Expansion\u201d while relieving the over-intensification of population in the city cente. Otherwise, mere building of more\u00a0roads and further restriction of vehicle registration will not help in easing road congestion in the city center. \u00a0In this regard, it is interesting to note the &#8220;Proposals on the Construction\u00a0of Guangzhou\u00a0City\u00a0Bus&#8221; [5],\u00a0issued in August 2013\u00a0by the Guangzhou\u00a0Development Research Institute, which reported that Guangzhou\u2019s public transport system carried a daily traffic of about\u00a014.48 million\u00a0passengers,\u00a0accounting for\u00a060% of motorized travel. This is similar to the figure of 59.6% stated in the &#8220;2010 Guangzhou Transport\u00a0Development\u00a0Annual\u00a0Report&#8221;. While it is thus evident that public transport is the main mode of travel in Guangzhou (stabilizing at about 60% over the recent years), this is still a wide gap from those of Tokyo and Hong Kong\u00a0(at 82%\u00a0to 87%).<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>With the two-prong objectives of easing population concentration and relieving traffic congestion, it is opportune for Guangzhou\u00a0to actively implement the\u00a0&#8220;public transportation priority&#8221; development strategy. This should encompass measures to enhance transportation\u00a0infrastructure, optimize\u00a0traffic travel\u00a0management, emphasize smart transportation development, upgrade transportation\u00a0service level and\u00a0operational\u00a0efficiency, and build\u00a0long-term working\u00a0mechanism\u00a0that can progressively ease\u00a0traffic congestion effectively. Taking the perspective of low-carbon and ecological city development, combined with reference to latest international know how and trends of public transportation development, it is recommended to\u00a0research\u00a0and\u00a0build a sustainable\u00a0smart (automation-guided) transport system\u00a0that will serve as one of the significant\u00a0public transportation\u00a0modalities of\u00a0Guangzhou, supplementing the subway MRT networks that will undoubtedly still be of increasing importance as the primary public transport system.<\/p>\n<p>\u3002[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][vc_column width=&#8221;1\/2&#8243;][vc_single_image image=&#8221;6566&#8243; img_size=&#8221;full&#8221;][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[vc_row][vc_column width=&#8221;1\/2&#8243;][vc_single_image image=&#8221;6565&#8243; img_size=&#8221;full&#8221;][\/vc_column][vc_column width=&#8221;1\/2&#8243;][vc_column_text]With the sustained rapid economic and social development progress of Guangzhou, and the consequential significant rise of disposable income of its expanding population, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-6631","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/guangzhougrt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/guangzhougrt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/guangzhougrt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/guangzhougrt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/guangzhougrt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6631"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/guangzhougrt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6631\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6635,"href":"https:\/\/guangzhougrt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6631\/revisions\/6635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/guangzhougrt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}