World Bank urges China to boost public transport

BEIJING (Reuters) - China needs to improve public transport to help curb choking traffic jams instead of building more and more highways to make room for private cars, the World Bank said on Wednesday.

Too few Chinese cities had devised coherent urban transport plans while those that had often failed to stick to them, it said.

"A major challenge for the Chinese cities now is how to develop an efficient bus transport system before the critical mass of motorists is formed and shapes an irreversible, auto-dependent land use pattern," it said.

Urban transport problems in China were beginning to affect the productivity of workers and lead to excessive conversion of agricultural land, it said.

Most cities needed to find alternatives to urban rail networks given the high costs involved and the length of time spent on building such systems.

Chinese cities, including even second-tier ones, are already investing billions of dollars in new or expanded subway systems.

By 2010, 35 percent of Shanghai's commuters are expected to use the subway, up from 12 percent in 2005, by which time Shanghai will have 11 subway lines totalling 400 km (240 miles), state media has said.

In Beijing -- where about 1,000 new vehicles take to the road a day -- the average speed during peak hours on the city's arterial roads had dropped by half in the last decade, the report said.

And in the southern boomtown on Shenzhen, across the border from Hong Kong, traffic accidents have been the top killer for the last three years, it added.

Tags: China | Development | Beijing