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Price Slash as Promotion for Beijing's Buses

Public bus ridership in Beijing has increased significantly to 9.3 million passengers per day from 8.6 million per day since the city introduced IC cards (Yikatong) and slashed selected bus fares at the beginning of 2007, according to the Beijing Bus Group.

The bus group study indicates that 7.8 million people have taken advantage of the city’s new IC card system because of its convenience. With it a rider can also take advantage of the city’s reduced-fare rates. The IC card works like a bank debit card and can be used on buses and subways. The number of services available using the card is expected to be increased in the future.

Statistics also indicate that the use of the IC card and the fare discounting that began on selected bus routes on January 1, 2007, has increased ridership even on buses that are not part of the fare-reduction plan, such as air-conditioned buses.

The former paper-based monthly pass for buses has been abolished. Prices of bus routes less than number 499, which were eligible for monthly passes, will be lowered from 1 yuan (13 US cents) to 4 mao (5 US cents) and 2 mao (2.5 US cents) for students. On routes numbered 500 to 899, both ordinary and air-conditioned buses, riders using IC cards qualify for a discount of 60 percent for ordinary passengers and 80 percents for students beginning with a base price of 1 yuan (13 US cents) for 12 kilometres (km) and 0.5 yuan (6 US cents) for every extra 5 km.

 A 20-percent discount is given to riders of buses with numbers beginning with the number nine, which are mostly suburban routes. There is no discounting of fares on the city’s subways or light-rail trains, even though the IC card can be used to ride.

Liu Xiaoming, a spokesman for the Beijing Municipal Committee of Communication, on December 27, 2006, said the direct goal of the discount plan was to balance passenger loads between monthly-pass eligible routes and non-eligible routes as well as those found on ordinary and air-conditioned buses. Liu said the city wants to change people’s habits of travelling and to reduce the number of private cars on the roads to ease overcrowding on city streets.

The reform was warmly welcomed by passengers. Before the final plan was announced, The Beijing News conducted a survey concerning abolishing monthly passes among its readers. It turned out that 50.4 percent of respondents hoped there would be a 50 percent discount and nearly 30 percent hoped the discount could be higher than 60 percent if there were no monthly passes.

Xie Meng, a computer engineer who has to commute between Sihuidong (near the East Fourth Ring Road) to Anzhenqiao (North Third Ring Road) everyday has seen his fair drop from 6 yuan (77 US cents) to 1.2 yuan (15 US cents) per day. “It’s really cheap now to take bus,” said Xie. “I was planning to buy a car in 2007, but now, I’ll reconsider. It will be even better if the buses can be faster and not so crowded.”

Nevertheless, some experts have expressed reservations about the effect of reducing private car commuters by just reducing bus fares.

“The reform measures did not change people’s travelling habits,” said Qiang Lei, member of the People’s Political Consultative Conference of Beijing Municipality. “Although the price is much lower, the number of passengers remains the same. The private car owners won’t choose buses just because of the lower price.”

The loss in revenue stemming from the price reduction will be borne by the Beijing Municipal Government, whose leaders have decided to allocate 4.97 billion yuan (US$636 million), an increase of 1.3 billion yuan (US$166 million) than 2006, to upgrade the ground public transportation system in 2007.

But this fare reduction is just the beginning of the municipal government’s plan to carry out the reform on the city’s public transportation system, which is aimed at improving the speed, convenience and comfort of buses and the subway under the principle of “taking public transportation as the priority” of the government.  

Other measures include increasing fiscal expenditures, expanding the subway network   and optimizing bus routes and others.

During the 11th Five-Year Programme (2006-2010), Beijing plans to invest a total of 7.15 billion yuan (US$915 million) to improve the city’s public transportation system.

The Beijing urban railway network is scheduled to be extended to 192 km before the 2008 Olympics and reach 270 km–300 km in 2010. Bus-lanes will be lengthened to a total of 450 km in 2010 from 165 km now. Some overlapping routes will be abolished, but residential communities with more than 7,000 residents will be able to apply for community bus routes.

The Beijing Municipal Government has decided to make improving its public transportation system a priority, because a rapid increase in private-car use has caused so many serious problems for the city’s commuters and transportation in general.

Among the 2.82 million vehicles in Beijing, 1.56 million are private cars, accounting for 55.32 percent of the total. Those cars account for about 68.9 percent of traffic in the city, but carry only about 29.8 percent of the total passengers, representing a lack of efficiency.

“The average speed during rush hours on main roads between the Second and Third Ring roads decreased from 45 kilometres per hour (km/h) in 1994 to 10 km/h in 2005, which is slower than the 12 km/h of a bicycle,” Qiu Baoxing, a vice-minister of the Ministry of Construction said at the National Prioritizing Urban Public Transportation Work Conference. “And among the 183 major intersections, 60 percent are troubled with serious traffic jams.”

Certainly, the over-burdened city is suffering from traffic jams, but its residents are also choking on ever-thickening waste gases. According to findings based on satellite images released by the European Space Agency, Beijing and the neighbouring Northeast region are world’s most-affected areas suffering from pollution by nitrogen dioxide, which results from the burning of fossil fuels and from vehicle emissions. For instance, in Ontario, Canada, vehicle emissions off all types account for 63 percent of that province’s nitrogen dioxide emissions, while power generation is responsible for about 15 percent. [See: http://www.airqualityontario.com/science/pollutants/nitrogen.cfm]

Sources indicate that China’s nitrogen dioxide emissions are increasing to dangerous levels, even as the same emissions levels are declining in the United States and Europe.

Still, more people are turning to car ownership because it’s considered more convenient than public transportation, especially for commuters who live in suburban areas but who work elsewhere. In the city, for example, it takes nearly one hour by bus to get from the Beijing Railway Station to the Beijing West Railway Station, while on most days it takes only 25–35 minutes by car.

As a result, commuters using public transportations accounted for only 29.8 percent of the total commuters at the end of 2005, compared with more than 60 percent in big cities such as Tokyo, London and Paris. One ambitious plan in this reform is to increase the number from 29.8 to 42 percent by the end of 2010. To achieve that goal, the municipal government, aside from slashing prices, will also focus on improving the comfort and convenience of public transportation by adding more air-conditioned buses and by creating more special bus lanes to attract more private car owners to take public transportation during workdays.