Chapter 19 Itch on the road

An old man waiting to cross the street in Beijing has difficulty walking in the face of heavy traffic "How can we build roads in cities?" The torrent of cars accompanying the main roads is pouring into Chinese cities. When high-level officials propose to build a "saving society", has this high-consumption mode of transportation already faced a decision? The Ministry of Construction, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Land and Resources, and the Ministry of Finance jointly issued the "Notice on Cleaning Up and Controlling Unrealistic Wide Roads and Large Square Construction in Urban Construction" in February last year, which regulated the width of roads in local cities in a rare way. Restrictions are imposed, and all cities are required to suspend the approval of urban road projects with a red line width exceeding 80 meters (including 80 meters).

The central government has made a real move: the width of the red line of the main arterial road in the city, including the green belt, shall not exceed 40 meters for small cities and towns, 55 meters for medium-sized cities, and 70 meters for large cities; If the main arterial road in the city really needs to exceed 70 meters, it should be specially stated in the overall urban plan.If the urban roads to be constructed exceed the above-mentioned standards, the design shall be modified to keep them within the specified standards. The "prescribed standard" is still strictly adhered to a "wide target", which shows that the roads in some cities are already wide and unscrupulous.After more than a year, has the local governor been able to avoid eating?

The situation remains complex.Under the cultural mentality of "seeking big", Damalu has long been used to moving forward amidst cheers.The "Notice" of the four ministries and commissions stated: "It is necessary to improve the planning and management of urban road traffic, aiming at the problems existing in urban traffic, rationally plan the layout of the road network, increase the density of the road network, and improve the organization and management of traffic." Has this already affected the traffic strategy of Chinese cities? Make an impact? "The wider the road, the less popular it is."

In just a few months, the Meishi Street expansion project that runs through Beijing’s Qianmen Dashilan Reserve from north to south has been completely demolished. Huang Hui said to me in a disappointed tone, “When will the plan we made be approved?” The chief architect of Beijing Jintian Architectural Design Company has repeatedly failed and failed in the Qianmen area of ​​Beijing in the past two years.The Qianmen business district adjacent to Tiananmen Square in the north, Xianyukou in the east, and Dashilan in the west are the first batch of historical and cultural protection areas announced by Beijing.Now two 25-meter-wide avenues will be demolished to run through the north and south. The one at Xianyukou is called Qianmen East Street, and the one with Dashilan is called Meishi Street.The opening of these two roads is part of the renovation project of the reserve.

Huang Hui first participated in the planning and design of the Xianyukou project, and proposed the idea of ​​building Qianmen East Street into an underground double-layer road, narrowing the width of the road to 18 meters, and transit traffic passing through the ground. "Although this has increased some costs, it has also reduced investment in demolition because of fewer houses to be demolished." Huang Hui said, "More importantly, the roads have been narrowed and vehicles have been diverted, so that everyone can go shopping. There will be businesses! In addition, the combined width of the ground and underground roads is 36 meters, and the traffic flow has also increased.”

Her efforts were unsuccessful, and the original width of the road was like a high-tension line that could not be changed.At this time, the construction unit of the Dashilan project across the street found her. "They were very interested in my ideas, so I moved the model of Qianmen East Street to Meishi Street, and made a plan, which is waiting for government approval. But at this time, the road has been demolished. This is the superior It is decided by the department," Huang Hui said. The purpose of tearing down these two roads is to divert motor vehicles and turn Qianmen Street into a pedestrian street.Earlier, an assessment report by the World Bank proposed that Dashilan should be protected in accordance with the standards of the world heritage, and large-scale road widening and new road construction should be avoided. Population movement is important, but building more and more roads for the planned traffic demand will only lead to more traffic and greater congestion. The second and third ring roads in Beijing are a vivid example."

"The wider the road, the less popular it is." When he said this, Huang Hui opened the drawing and pointed to Guang'an Avenue at the south end of Qianmen. "This street is 70 meters wide and runs across the south city of Beijing from east to west. The three major commercial districts of Zhushikou and Ciqikou have all declined. With such a wide road and so many cars whizzing by, no one wants to shop!” She went to Caishikou Department Store, and the crowded scene disappeared. "Several salesmen surrounded me and asked me what to buy? I was very sad. Gu Yi bought a few more things to give them some relief."

The Metropolitan Street on the southwest side of Ciqikou was deserted, and Huang Hui was invited to participate in the demonstration to see how to revitalize it. "There is such a wide road in front, how can businesses survive?" Huang Hui felt helpless, "Guang'an Street is simply a road, how can we build roads in the city?" Suburban model that loses its urban sense "Beijing is a big suburb." In the office of the Design Center of Toulon University in New Orleans, USA, Professor Crawford, winner of the "Rome Award for Architecture", made such an evaluation.

He said to me: "I visited Beijing, and what I saw there is that everyone is pursuing the width of the roads. These wide roads have nothing to do with the buildings on both sides, and they just pass quickly. This is a typical suburban model. .Judging from the huge scale of Beijing’s urban road network, it is also a suburban model, which loses the feeling of the city.” Chang'an Avenue runs through the center of Beijing from east to west with a width of 120 meters. Motor vehicles are prohibited from parking on both sides of the road, and the traffic is rushing.A billboard on the side of the road warned pedestrians: "Going further will be punished, and taking a step back will be respected."

It is dangerous to walk on foot in such streets. When the Beijing Municipal Government was discussing the width of Chang’an Avenue in 1957, architect Liang Sicheng said: “Sprinters need to run for 11 seconds, and ordinary people take more than one minute to walk. It is even more difficult for old women with small feet to cross this street. .” Today, Chang'an Avenue and its extensions have been built into underground passages and overpasses.Pedestrians are considered uncivilized if they insist on crossing the road without choosing the way of "going to the sky" or "going to the ground".More seriously, this may be a "deadly" behavior.

In 1999, when the World Architects Conference was held in Beijing, Vivian Jaffa, the president of the South African Institute of Architects, died in a car accident while crossing a road in Beijing.British architectural scholar Peter David wrote an article for this: "Beijing, a huge city with a population of 12 million, stretches on a vast land, embodies various faults in architecture and urban development at the turn of the century", " Small transport machines often have to compete with huge transport trucks, as well as numerous taxis and buses, or rush past at alarming speeds, or get stuck in traffic jams that they can never get out of." In 1958, Beijing’s urban master plan adjusted the width of the three main arterial roads, Chang’an Street, Qianmen Street, and Gulou South Street, to 120 to 140 meters, and proposed that the width of general arterial roads be 80 to 120 meters, and the width of secondary arterial roads be 60 to 80 meters. At that time, the State Planning Commission questioned the width of Beijing's roads many times. Some people ridiculed that "a house must have five floors, and a road must be a hundred meters", and some people even criticized it as "big road doctrine".A leader in Beijing said: "The roads are narrow, and cars only travel ten kilometers in an hour. Isn't it a waste? The problem in the future is that the roads are too narrow, not too wide." "Wide and thin" vs. "Narrow and dense" "It's not wise to build big roads," Jeff Su, secretary general of the American Planning Association, told me in Washington. "You see, this is a high-density road network. If I want to go to a place, if there is a traffic jam ahead, I can easily change my driving route and choose another way to get there. Because in such a road network, a place It is always connected to multiple roads." He took out a pen and paper and drew while drawing in his office, "And if you build a big road, it can only lead to one place. For a fast ring road like Beijing, if there is a traffic jam Everyone can’t get out, they can only squeeze there, and the congestion area will expand rapidly, which is a very fragile situation. So, you might as well break down a large road into many small roads and make them form a system.” "We evaluate the traffic of a place mainly by the quality of its road network, and in such an evaluation system, the width of the road is no longer important." He came to such a conclusion. In terms of road network planning, Beijing has long implemented a "wide and sparse" two-way traffic model, with motor vehicle lanes generally separated by 700 to 800 meters.In contrast, cities in western developed countries have "narrow and dense" roads, and motor vehicle lanes are generally 100 to 150 meters apart.These cities take advantage of the road network to develop one-way traffic. The New York Traffic Management Bureau began to implement one-way lanes in 1949, while London turned two-thirds of the roads into one-way lanes.According to calculations, due to the simple intersection of one-way lanes, the traffic volume can be increased by 50% to 70% compared with two-way lanes. Beijing's road network is sparse, and one important reason is that there are many "compounds".In the 1950s, there was a "court craze" in Beijing, and later residential quarters were built in the city.In the west, residential quarters are generally built in the suburbs, and cities are arranged in small neighborhoods, naturally forming a dense road network. "However, the United States has also learned a painful lesson, that is, in the 1950s and 1960s, many large roads were built in cities, and even a group of super-large streets were built, and cities were maintained by large roads and cars. Today we know I realize that such a city is inhuman," Su Geoff told me. In the city of Phoenix in the southwestern United States, the driver Reb gave up his lunch because of a headache.He drove me here from Tucson early in the morning, and I was stuck on the highway for more than an hour before entering the city.The streets of Phoenix are huge, wide and straight, much like Beijing.But the density of the city is very low, and there are many single-storey single-story buildings along the roadside, which are endless.Such a low density, paired with wide roads, will allow vehicles to fly fast. Here, few people are seen on the streets, and walking is tedious and dangerous.Due to the high speed of the vehicle, in order to facilitate the identification of pedestrians, the houses have huge numbers.Reb was dazzled by these complicated numbers, kept calling and asking, and looked around while driving at high speed.After tossing and tossing for another hour, I finally arrived at the restaurant by luck.After that, he had a headache and felt deeply sorry for the passengers. The "American disease" on the main road In the middle of the last century, a number of "car cities" such as Phoenix, Los Angeles, and Tucson emerged in the western United States.In these places, where the car can drive, the city will sprawl.Los Angeles is composed of a network of highways. The entire city spreads with a thin density like the Sahara Desert. There is not even an accurate concept of the downtown area. You can get on the highway as soon as you go out, and everything is point-to-point. In such an environment, it is difficult to survive without a car.If the elderly cannot drive a car, they can only go to the orphanage to wait for God's will.The situation for children is also not good, the streets are not safe and children are not seen playing there.There are not so many stories happening in the city, and there are few chances of love at first sight.The speeding vehicles create a whirlwind, "drying" the fun of life. The reason for this kind of urban form is often because the downtown area was disappointing at the beginning, "dirty, messy, poor" and congestion occurred, so people chose to flee, but the subway and other public transportation did not keep up, so Everyone travels by car, causing the city to expand rapidly.Now, it is very difficult to invite people back. In such a low-density super-large city, public transportation is a waste of money. People have become "parasites" of cars and are extremely sensitive to fluctuations in oil prices. The same as Beijing, these "car cities" have huge neighborhoods, most of which are independent "compounds". The American name for them literally translates to "gate communities". They are surrounded by walls and are the product of the city's loss of security.Different from Beijing, the houses inside the "Damen Community" are also low-density. If the density increases, the number of vehicles will increase dramatically, and the main road will be blocked into a parking lot. This situation happened in Beijing. Driving on the main road in the city, in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s, was also the kind of real knife and gun, and many people cheered for it.Boston is going to build a main road, will it pass through the Irish Quarter or the Italian Quarter?The mayor who was born in the Irish Quarter, of course wanted to let this road pass through the place where he grew up, leaving the Italian Quarter aside, but he didn’t expect that the Irish Quarter would decline because of this big road, and the Italian Quarter, which is suitable for walking, is more popular. Ding Xingwang. During that campaign, San Francisco's waterfront was cut off by an elevated road, and the cars drove faster, but the old harbor lost its beauty and popularity. An earthquake in 1989 knocked down the viaduct, people woke up like a dream, abandoned the reconstruction plan, replaced it with public transportation, and the business quickly revived. Philadelphia didn't have such good "luck".Its riverside area was cut off by an embedded expressway, and has never recovered. It looks like Beijing's Fourth Ring Road passing through Zhongguancun.At present, the Philadelphia authorities are beginning to cover this highway "trench" with a pedestrian system in order to revive it.In the United States, similar plans include burying a highway near the Capitol in Washington.However, it will cost a lot of money to clear the "ecological barriers" in these cities, and getting approval from the parliament is like going up the mountain of knives. The sidewalk on Jiaodaokou South Street in Beijing was dismantled and turned into a bicycle lane "Is this progress?" Back then, the highway project in the United States aroused public outrage, protests continued one after another, and construction plans continued to be blocked.The upshot is that some cities didn't get worse. Clover participated in a famous "campaign" against the main road, and he was the planner of the New Orleans Old French City Preservation Plan.At that time, a large road was going to cross near the old French city, which triggered civil lawsuits.Clauver's protection committee stated that the area passing by the main road is the protection area of ​​the old French city, and the road project has been bankrupt because of this.Today, the citizens are glad to have won that battle, and the unscathed old French city has become a golden sign of New Orleans. The Washington Architectural Museum has a permanent exhibit that tells the story of the city's tortuous journey.The documentary shows people's mixed feelings about the main road in the 1960s.At that time, there was a large-scale traffic congestion in the city, and the main road construction plan was introduced.Unexpectedly, these roads attracted more traffic, making the city a dead knot.Street protests against the main road emerged, with signs such as: "Road to death!" "Is this progress?" "Who controls the land?" Building roads means demolishing houses, and social conflicts intensify.Smith Albert, spokesman of the non-governmental organization ECTC, gave a speech: "White people living in the suburbs want to enter the city center happily, so they destroy black communities. Who are these roads suffering? I wrote this Slogan: "White people's roads cannot pass through black people's homes!" I refuse to bear the economic and racial discrimination caused by road repairing!" But at the time, road repair was a huge industry, providing one-third of all jobs in the United States, and the problem quickly rose to a political level.Ultimately, the growing number of street protests and the fact that roads are getting more congested forced the authorities to find another way out.Only one of the three beltway expressways planned in Washington after World War II was built, replaced by a huge subway development plan. The Washington Metro was decided in 1966, the line was selected in 1968, and it was completed in 2001.The entire city is covered by the subway network, and public transportation undertakes 80% of the citizens' trips.Beijing's experience is the opposite. In 1965, the construction of the Beijing Subway started, but it has been silent for a long time since then, but Damalu is invincible.Beijing has completed 4 expressways around the city, and the sixth ring road is also under construction.As a result, the number of cars is exploding, and public transport is responsible for only 24% of citizens' trips. "Cities should be designed for people, not for cars." Crawford said, "Once a city is built, it is difficult to change. A city with a large road like Phoenix is ​​simply hopeless now. The urban density of Beijing is higher than that of Phoenix. Tall, and to do that, it’s just going to be a suburb bigger than Phoenix.” Chinese complex on the main road But in China, the big road is always put together with words such as "majestic" and "magnificent", and has become an ideal city symbol for people. A book entitled "Chengdu Criticism" ridiculed "Chengdu is a big village" at the beginning, and one of the arguments was that "Chengdu does not have a street with the specifications of Beijing's Chang'an Avenue, or even an eight-lane street."The author sang the opposite of Crawford. Damalu culture has a long history in China.In Chang'an City of the Tang Dynasty, "the streets and roads are straight, which has not existed in the imperial capital since ancient times." Most of the streets leading to the city gate are more than 100 meters wide, and the narrowest Shuncheng Street is also 20 to 30 meters wide.From Mingde Gate in the south of the city to the north, there is a Suzaku Avenue nearly 5,000 meters long and 155 meters wide.At the end of the Tang Dynasty, when the national power was declining, because of the huge scale of Zhuque Street, ordinary people could secretly grow crops in it. Chang'an City is also composed of "gate communities". Each neighborhood is surrounded by a wall and has a gate. What you see in the city is a wall, and business is limited to two places: "East Market" and "West Market". , These two markets are also enclosed by square walls. The Song Dynasty rebuilt the cities of the Tang Dynasty, the walls of the squares were demolished, and people could do business on the street, and an urban scene like "Along the River During the Qingming Festival" appeared.The existing ancient city of Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties in Beijing was planned and constructed from the flat land in the way of streets and alleys in the "Surfing the River During the Qingming Festival", which has become a milestone in the history of urban development in China. In this city, the closed "lifang" of the Tang Dynasty disappeared, replaced by a system of alleys and alleys.The hutong is a residential area, and the streets and alleys on both sides are arranged for commerce; the hutong is several hundred meters long, with a distance of more than 70 meters. The artistic conception of human environment without the noise of cars and horses". "These street systems, which were born in the 13th century, are still used by us today. It is a remarkable thing, and they should be cherished as heritage." Xu Pingfang, a researcher in the Yuan Dynasty and chairman of the Chinese Archaeological Society, said, "The key is whether this city is in the end. Should we develop cars or public transportation? If we choose public transportation, the streets on both sides of the hutong can arrange bus routes, so what are you afraid of when you come out of the hutong and walk a few steps?” The bus that Xu Pingfang is looking forward to is not a mix of cars and buses. In recent years, the internationally popular large-capacity rapid transit system has attracted his attention.Bogota, the capital of Colombia with a population of more than 7 million, built large-capacity BRT and turned most of the road area into bus-only lanes, changing the habit of citizens driving cars to and from get off work, and taking fast and punctual buses instead.In just three years, the city has shed the title of "city blockade" without spending much money. Xu Pingfang believes that "Beijing's ancient hutong street system can fully keep up with the trend of the times." bus vs car race Large-capacity BRT has entered the official vision. When Huanghui was worrying about the two avenues running through Xianyukou and Dashilan, in December last year, China's first large-capacity express bus drove out along Qianmen Street, and it was Xianyu that passed south. There are two protected areas, the Kou and Dashilan. The large-capacity BRT line heading south from Qianmen has a designed total length of 16 kilometers. The first phase of the line currently in operation is 5 kilometers each way, of which 2.5 kilometers are dedicated to BRT.This route is equipped with 8 large-capacity buses, and the one-way journey takes 12 minutes. The operating bus is an 18-meter-long Iveco bus, which can accommodate nearly 200 people, which is twice that of ordinary buses.During peak hours, two or three trains can be dispatched in tandem. The Beijing Municipal Transportation Commission stated that Beijing will start building large-capacity BRTs on six suburban roads in the near future.It is estimated that by 2008 or 2010, the mileage of large-capacity BRT in Beijing will grow to 300 kilometers. The World Bank's evaluation report believes that high-quality public transportation can provide a balance point between providing accessibility to people and avoiding demolition of social life in Dashilar area.Under the unified parking policy of the whole city, the parking charges in this area should be increased accordingly to encourage everyone to use public transportation. However, the large-capacity BRT running on Qianmen Street did not have any impact on the two roads that were "disemboweled" in Xianyukou and Dashilan.In fact, this city needs to develop both public transport and cars, and the latter is obviously stronger than the former. The main road planning in the 1950s is "flowering and bearing fruit" in this city, and road expansion projects can be seen everywhere.The main road is carrying a flood of cars and suffocating exhaust fumes into the core area of ​​the ancient city. In addition to causing huge losses in cultural heritage protection, it has also contributed to 9.07% of Beijing's children's lead poisoning. Open the "Conservation Plan for Twenty-five Historical and Cultural Reserves in Beijing's Old City", and road expansion projects can be seen everywhere—— A 20-meter-wide urban road will be opened at Dongbanqiao and Songzhuyuan North Lane in the northeast of the imperial city; In the Guozijian and Lama Temple areas, Andingmen Inner Street and Lama Temple Street will be demolished to 60 meters wide and 70 meters wide respectively, and a 25-meter-wide urban road will be crossed from east to west; The Lama Temple Reserve will open a Bolin Temple East Street, and open a north-south road that connects to the Second Ring Road in the north; A 30-35 meter wide north-south urban secondary trunk road will be demolished in the Nanluoguxiang Reserve; In the Shichahai Reserve, Deshengmen Inner Street will be widened, an east-west urban secondary road will be opened north of the Bell Tower and Drum Tower, and an avenue will be drilled into the ground from the east side of the Drum Tower, cross Shichahai, and then emerge from the west of Liuyin Street... … This planning conveys the message to people that the ancient city of Beijing needs to be protected and rebuilt. There is also: traffic congestion is equal to the road is not wide. Fast-way "bowel obstruction" From a global perspective, no city has achieved success because of the equal emphasis on the development of buses and cars. Washington has well-developed public transport, but the overly wide roads attract too many cars, and traffic jams often occur. It is criticized by local residents as a "make do with the city". New York has chosen the transit-led model without hesitation.The New York subway extends in all directions, with four lanes in both directions, supporting Manhattan, which has the densest skyscrapers in the world.The municipal authorities did not blindly expand the roads. The narrow streets just dissuade people from traveling by car. Nearly 80% of Manhattan residents do not have private cars, and shopping has become a kind of enjoyment.The famous Times Square is booming, and there is no need to turn it into a pedestrian street. People and motor vehicles are very friendly here. Transportation policies determine the shape of cities.Cities that choose "cars + big roads" generally expand at a low density and on a large scale.The cities formed in the Middle Ages were on the scale of pedestrians and carriages, with narrow streets and high population density.European cities conform to this feature, and through the development of "walking + public transportation", they have embarked on a "win-win" road of protection and development. Also as a high-density medieval city, Beijing's hutong and street system can adapt to the "walking + bus" mode.But the current trend in this city is "cars + big roads".The consequences were rendered by a humorous article on the website: "The second ring road in Beijing: the second parking lot; the third ring road: the third parking lot; the fourth ring road: the fourth parking lot; the fifth ring road is free from traffic jams because It charges.” Last year, the Fifth Ring Road canceled the toll, and the traffic flow continued. There are many high-rise buildings on both sides of the Beijing Ring Expressway, which is full of interchanges. In such a high-density urban environment, the expressway can only open entrances and exits frequently, otherwise the city will be left behind.The interference of import and export vehicles caused the speeding traffic to suddenly slow down, so that there were many hidden dangers of accidents.In the end, the speed of the car dropped completely, and "intestinal obstruction" appeared on the expressway.This is a rare experience in the world. The overpass quickly concentrates the congestion of several crossroads in one place.During peak hours, when the Jingtong Expressway, which is a full interchange along the east extension of Chang’an Avenue, enters the city, vehicles are blocked from the Fourth Ring Road to the Second Ring Road; while the west extension of Chang’an Avenue is regulated by traffic lights, the time to enter the city is comparable to that of Jingtong Expressway. faster.At this time, it is meaningless to spend huge sums of money to build an exchange. Beijing's urban structure with the ancient city as a single center has already contained 30% to 50% of the main functions of the city, and the ancient city is responsible for one-third of the city's traffic flow.A large number of people live in the suburbs and work in the central area, arousing a flood of traffic between the city and the suburbs.Before the urban functions were transferred outwards, the road expansion project in the ancient urban area caused a "broken embankment" effect, directly introducing and "flooding" the "torrent" of traffic, and the "dead knot" of traffic in the central area became tighter and tighter. Quality continued to deteriorate. Hou Xianglin, an academician of the two academies, believes that the excessive development of small cars in big cities is not in line with China's national conditions. "my country's transportation is based on the car-based model of economically developed countries. After 40 to 50 years, the number of cars will only reach the current level of moderately developed countries. There will be about 400 million vehicles per vehicle for four people. The fuel consumption per vehicle is reduced to 1 ton per year, and 400 million tons of gasoline and diesel oil are still needed, which is unbearable.” Damalu transformed Beijing with great inertia. The cultural heritage of this city that has been swallowed by the main road for more than 50 years, including Di'anmen Square echoing Tiananmen Square from north to south, Qingshou Twin Pagoda Temple on West Chang'an Street, Dongyue Temple Mountain Gate on Chaowai Street, and Yuedong New Street on Caishikou South Street. Museum, the ruins of Cao Xueqin's former residence on Guang'an Street, etc., as well as countless archways, majestic ancient city walls and towers. "In order to protect the city tower, Liang Sicheng once proposed a detour around the island, but was criticized as letting cars take detours to waste gasoline. But what happened later? The entire city wall was demolished and the second ring road was built, which made a huge detour! Isn't it a waste of gasoline?" said Lu Zhou, deputy dean of the School of Architecture at Tsinghua University. In 1954, in order to preserve Dianmen and archway, Liang Sicheng once again put forward the circumvention plan. Later, he was forced to review in political criticism: "I disregarded the extreme lack of housing for the people, and proposed to demolish a hundred houses around them. Get off the detour." Today, large-scale house demolition and road construction are regarded as political achievements and encouraged. "It is understandable that the Municipal Planning Commission allocates a certain amount of financial funds to each district and county for municipal construction every year, but it chooses to subsidize the trunk roads with a width of more than 50 meters (inclusive), regardless of the branch roads. The road is the most damaging to the old city of Beijing." In July 2004, "Beijing Planning and Construction" magazine published an article as a comment. Attributing traffic congestion to "low road area ratio" and "the speed of road construction cannot keep up with the speed of motor vehicle growth"—these propositions, which have long been questioned by the international academic circles, have long been embraced by some administrators and professionals and regarded as continuation The reason for the expansion. According to this point of view, Los Angeles, where transportation facilities account for nearly two-thirds of the city's area, is most suitable for Beijing's appetite.However, this city has grown up and is really not suitable for the "roller boots" of Los Angeles. Limping city traffic by forcing one's own feet into other people's shoes. In 2003, a survey report by the Beijing Municipal Committee of the Democratic National Construction Association showed two sets of figures—— Beijing's investment in transportation infrastructure reached 40 billion yuan during the "Ninth Five-Year Plan" period, accounting for 4.3% of GDP; during the "Tenth Five-Year Plan" period, it is expected to invest 83.8 billion yuan, accounting for 5.15% of GDP.Such investment is rare in the world.However, the reality of Beijing's traffic has not been fundamentally alleviated. During the 10 years from 1990 to 2001, the traffic flow in the urban area of ​​Beijing increased at an average annual rate of more than 15%.Statistics show that the two-way cross-section traffic flow during peak hours is 10,000 vehicles on the Second Ring Road, 11,000 vehicles on the Third Ring Road, and 13,000 vehicles on the Fourth Ring Road.This means that the three urban ring roads pass 1,666 to 2,166 cars per lane per hour on average during peak hours, which is close to or even greater than the saturated car volume of the expressway. Economist Mao Yushi calculated: "Beijing's annual traffic jam is about 6 billion direct losses." But this terrible figure reminds some people that such a bad situation shows that Beijing still needs more and bigger roads.In fact, building bridges and building roads is already in full swing. On Nanlishi Road, where the Beijing Municipal Planning Commission is located, half of the sidewalk was cut off to give way to bicycle lanes, and the original bicycle lanes were given way to cars.Under such circumstances, there is no reason for cars not to drive in. The sidewalks that spawned romances began to be butchered.On the sidewalks of Jiaodaokou South Street in Dongcheng District, some people can only put their feet down, and some simply hit the wall.The space for pedestrians is compressed, they are discriminated against, and they have to buy a car in exchange for dignity. But the current situation is that in many places in this city, it is inconvenient to walk, ride a bicycle, take a bus, or drive a car. All because of one word: block.