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JOURNAL OF TRANSPORTATIONSYSTEMS ENGINEERING AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
 Volume 8, Issue 6, December 2008Online English edition of the Chinese language journal
Cite this article as:
J Transpn Sys Eng & IT, 2008, 8(6), 67
72.
Received date: Sep 24, 2008; Revised date: Nov 3, 2008; Accepted date: Nov 8, 2008
*
Corresponding author. E-mail: bhmao@china.comCopyright © 2008, China Association for Science and Technology. Electronic version published by Elsevier Limited. All rights reserved.
RESEARCH PAPER
Comparison of Pre- & Post-Olympic Traffic:A Case Study of Several Roads in Beijing
LIU Mingjun, MAO Baohua*, HUANG Yu, ZHANG Jianpeng, CHEN Shaokuan
Integrated Transport Research Center of China, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing 100044, China
Abstract:
During the 29th Olympic Games, the Organizing Committee proposed and applied a series of traffic control measures.This paper first introduces the traffic control measures, and then analyzes their effects on road traffic structure and volume. Itresulted that the ratio of non-motorized vehicles and buses are directly proportional to the intensity of traffic control, while the trafficvolume and V/C ratio are inversely proportional to it. The survey data indicated that with the launch of the traffic control measures,the ratio of passenger cars on expressway declined by 15.68% while that of buses inclined by 2.85% in AM peak. The vehiclevolume of expressway, arterial road, secondary road, and branch road declined by 18.84%, 22.13%, 38.5%, and 24.63%, respectively by lane, while the V/C ratio decreased by 59.09%, 20.00%, 68.75%, and 6.25%, respectively, in AM peak.
Key Words:
traffic control; Olympic transport; traffic volume; V/C ratio
1 Introduction
International events, such as the Olympic Games, FIFAWorld Cup, World Expo, etc., are categorized as hallmark events or mega-events. Hosting of mega-events is generallyreserved for cities with great opportunities for economicdevelopment and intercultural communication. However, italso affects a large number of vehicle trips which occur on aone-time, infrequent or non-daily basis
[1,2]
. Therefore, theevent organizing committee and its partners are facing thischallenge head on with a comprehensive plan aimed atensuring that the participants and spectators, as well as theresidents of the hosting city, experience a transportationsystem that is safe and highly efficient.During the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games, the authoritydeveloped and implemented a travel demand management plan, such as promoting four days work every week,encouraging small office home office (SOHO), offering anadditional ten days of paid vacation, deploying Olympicshuttle bus and a 126 km of high-occupancy vehicle (HOV)lane, expanding rail transit network, etc., to reduce regionalcommute trips and to alleviate traffic congestion. They alsodeveloped the most ambitious intelligent transportationsystems (ITS) in the United States, which included atransportation management center (TMC), six traffic controlcenters (TCC), and a transit information center (TIC), andincorporated with the regional advanced transportationmanagement systems (ATMS), advanced traveler informationsystems (ATIS), and advanced public transportation systems(APTS). As a result, the average weekday ridership on urbanrail transit and bus reached 957 thousand and 346 thousand,respectively, increasing by 316% and 37% as referred to inApril 1995, while the daily passenger volume of shuttle busreached 320 thousand. At last, commute peak periods werespread out more than normal weekdays, and the peak flowswere up to 30% less than on normal weekdays, and ozonelevels were measured to be 30% to 50% lower than normal, possibly as a consequence of the above
[3]
.To face the huge Olympic transport challenge, Sydney 2000established an Olympic Road and Transport Authority, a fullymultimodal public agency in charge of planning anddelivering of all Olympic transport services. According toORTA’s plan, all Olympic stadiums and venues were involvedin the public transit system and a new high capacity rail loopwith 5.3 km length was built to handle about 80% of theOlympic generated traffic. To reduce road traffic, no parkingwas offered at any Olympic venues and ticketed spectators,athletes, accredited Olympic workforce and volunteersenjoyed 24-hour free transport. Besides this, Sydney used allavailable techniques, such as extending holiday periods,
 
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 J Transpn Sys Eng & IT, 2008, 8(6), 67 
72
shifting some central business activities to outlying areas,curb-parking restrictions, to cut the Games time trafficdemands. All measures combined resulted in a backgroundtraffic reduction of about 20% and rail traffic growth from 14million to 29.5 million passengers per day
[4]
.By staggering work hours and odd-even day vehicleoperation, the road traffic volume in Seoul decreased by19.2% on average, and the traffic speed increased by 32.1% toachieve a smooth traffic movement during 2002 FIFAKorea-Japan Worldcup in the city of Seoul. Furthermore, theozone pollution rate dropped by 1/3 on average. Meanwhile,the mass transit’s capacity were greatly increased by shortenedsubway headway and extended operating hours, and provisionof temporary and shuttle buses, and then, 71.8% of spectatorsreached the stadiums by public transit
[5]
.In 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympic Games, theauthority’s goals were to get athletes and spectators toOlympic venues in an efficient and timely manner and toreduce background traffic by 20%. Then, a series of TDMstrategies, including increased transit use, carpools, shiftingwork hours earlier, as well as shifting travel routes and times(especially for trucks), were applied to reduce traffic volumes.Additionally, a piece of the transportation program named“Know before You Go” was designed to inform commuters,Olympic spectators, commercial drivers, and residents aboutthe best routes to take during the Olympic Games whether or not they are attending the Games. By the implementation of these measures, road traffic incident rate, traffic volume, anddelay dropped by 20%, 25%, and 30%, respectively, whereasthe peak hour speed increased by 15% during the Games
[6,7]
.Beijing carried out a temporary large-scale traffic controlduring November 1–6, 2006 when the Forum on China-AfricaCooperation was held. The survey results showed that 96.7%of pedestrians and 1.8% of drivers had changed their dailytravel habit. As for road traffic, almost 900 thousand vehicleswere sealed and stored up everyday, which led to a decline of traffic network volume and significant improvement of vehicles’ running speed. During the Forum, the average trafficvolume on the ring roads declined by 5.8% during themorning peak and by 5.3% during the evening peak, andaccordingly the average vehicle speed increased by 7.4% and15.6%, respectively. Several car-users turned to public transitin response to traffic control, and then the passenger volumeof buses and trolleys increased 300 thousand–590 thousand,which increased by nearly 2.94%–5.83% as compared withthat before the Forum; the passenger volume of subwayincreased 270 thousand–510 thousand in number, which isabout 15.70%–28.30% increase as compared with that beforethe Forum
[8]
. In order to attract as many visitors as possible totravel by public transit during 2006 FIFA Germany Worldcup,the authority proposed and implemented several Green Goaltransport measures such as integration of stadiums into publictransport networks, providing a small amount of direct parkingspace at stadiums, guidance for local public transport, specialoffers for the World Cup, and travel information for publictransport. Statistically, on the average of all World Cup gamesand host cities, around 57% of spectators adopted publictransport to commute to and from stadiums (including “park &ride”). A further 6% made their way on foot and around 11%traveled by coach. Environment-friendly means of transportthus obtained a share of 74%, and only 23% of stadiumvisitors traveled by cars
[9]
.To offer swift, safe transport services for the OlympicFamily, visitors, Olympic Venue staff and also to ease dailytransport of citizens and visitors during the Athens 2004Games, there were several transport management policiessuch as setting Olympic traffic lanes as wide as 160 km for accredited vehicles and buses, applying strict parkingrestrictions, 24-hour operation for subway, tram and Olympic bus lines and high operating frequencies as low as 2.5 minutesfor metro lines, dedicated bus lines, and so on. Consequently,74% spectators accessed the venues by public transportation,while 15% used private vehicles. At the peak day (August 21,2004), it was estimated that a total of 2.625 million trips wasaccommodated by the Athens public transportation system,and the number of trips was increased by 40% for that periodcompared the past years. As for the dedicated bus lines, theywere operated on an average of 6 minutes. Their averagespeeds were supposed to be between 30–40 km/h (typicalaverage speeds of buses in Athens are between 15–17km/h)
[10,11]
.By August 2008, Beijing promoted a safe road environment by improving traffic conditions around the competition arenain preparation of the large event as well as established proper transportation strategies to deal with the increasedtransportation demand and the traffic congestion. This paper introduces the traffic management policy of Beijing in preparation for the 2008 Olympic Games, and analyzes thetraffic operation status of four different periods, namely,Post-Olympic Traffic Control (Post-OTC), Pre-OlympicTraffic Control (Pre-OTC), Good Luck Beijing (GLB), andBase Survey Period (BS), by road traffic composition andtraffic volume with panel data. With quantitative descriptionof the TDM measures impact on road traffic, it providesexperiences and decision-making support for formulating andimplementing the TDM measures in the future.
2 General traffic control measuresof Beijing Olympic Games
To ensure event traffic and normal urban traffic to operateharmoniously and good air quality during the 2008 BeijingOlympic and Paralympics Games as well as fulfill thecommitment to host the Games, Beijing worked out “TrafficAssurance Plan during the 2008 Beijing Olympic and
 
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 J Transpn Sys Eng & IT, 2008, 8(6), 67 
72
Paralympic Games”. The general objective is to cut the totalnumber of vehicles on the roads, ensure traffic safety andmobility during the Games, provide public transportationservices for citizens to minimize the impact on people’s work and daily lives, reduce vehicle emissions, and improve air quality
[12]
. The main measures are listed as follows:(1) Reduction of the total number of motor vehicles stage by stageDuring the first stage (July 1 to 19, 2008), the vehicles thatfailed to meet the European No. 1 standard for exhaustemissions were all-day forbidden from the roads. Allgovernment offices, public institutions, army and police, andenterprises in the Beijing municipal administrative regionswere stopped using 30% of their motor vehicles per day,except for those vehicles providing normal food and dailysupply to the city. Other vehicles were encouraged to seal andstore up. During the second stage (July 20 to September 90,2008), all vehicles were made to follow the odd-and-evennumber rule on the basis of the first stage except some specialvehicles (police cars, fire trucks, ambulances, and engineeringservice vehicles), taxies, public buses, and licensed vehicles.The party and government offices at all levels as well as allenterprises and public institutions in the Beijing municipaladministrative regions were supposed to suspend the use of more than 70% of their total vehicles.(2) Establishment of Olympic special laneFrom June 27, 2008 to September 20, 2008, according tothe traffic demand and need of Olympic activities, Olympicspecial lanes were used or stopped. The primary special lanesoperated 24 hours per day while the minor special lanesoperated from 6:00 to 24:00 every day. The 30 special lanes(285.7 km) are mainly located in the expressway and urbanarterial roads such as the second ring road, the fourth ring road,the fifth ring road, airport freeway, Badaling freeway, andJingcheng freeway, and the total length of the Paralympicsspecial lanes is 209.9 km.(3) Public transit assurance measuresThe Beijing Bus Group increased operating vehicles andoperated 34 Olympic special bus lines. The Beijing MunicipalSubway Operation Corporation opened new lines, shortenedthe inter-arrival time and expanded the fleets. The Beijing taxicompanies also improved the transport capacity throughstrengthening vehicle maintenance, and reducing emptyvehicle ratio. The ticketed spectators, accredited people, andOlympic volunteers were able to enjoy free services on busand subway.(4) Distribution of goodsThe Beijing transport management department chosevehicles meeting the environmental protection standard fromenterprises, and the Beijing Public Security TrafficManagement Department approved and issued permits for qualified vehicles. These vehicles composed the “Greenvehicle fleet” to distribute produces and daily supplies duringthe Olympics.(5) Other measuresOther measures were adopted to ensure traffic smoothness,such as encouraging the elimination of yellow-label vehicles(vehicle not conforming to emission standard) and providing policy support, increasing provisions for the punishment of violated vehicles, as well as promoting the implementation of staggered work hours and flexible business hours for major department stores and shopping centers.Data from the Beijing Public Security Traffic ManagementDepartment and the Beijing Bus Group prove that thesemeasures had their immediate impacts. There were almost 1.8million vehicles sealed and stored up everyday, and the busoperating in the morning peak hour was extended from 6:30a.m. to 9:00 a.m. instead of 8:00 a.m. The bus operating timesincreased from 152 thousand to 167 thousand per day and theaverage operating speed reached 20 km/h from 14.5 km/h.Moreover, 350 bus lines extended the operating time, and thefirst bus advanced to 4:30 a.m., while the last bus was postponed to 22:00 p.m. During the Games, there were nearly4.5 million trips shifting from motor vehicles to public transit,which led to the public traffic volume recorded at 21.10million passengers per day.
3 Traffic flow composition
Traffic flow composition is defined as the proportion taken by different travel modes in the total traffic volume on a given point or road section per unit time. These travel modes, suchas passenger vehicles (including large-sized coaches,medium-sized coaches, and cars), trucks, buses, motorcycles, bicycles, etc., make the most contribution to the day-to-dayoperations of urban road traffic.Although the road network of Beijing has experienced greatimprovements in recent years, the network still cannot stillfully play its role in urban traffic, which is caused bytraditional annular network and unreasonable road network structure to some extent. In the end of the year 2007, the totalmileage of urban roads in Beijing reached 4460 km(expressway 236 km, arterial road 960 km, secondary road694 km, as well as branch road and street 2570 km), whichrose by 80.50% compared with the year 2000
[13,14]
. Meanwhile,there were 3.128 billion registered motor-vehicles by the endof 2007, which was an increase of 107.15% over the year 2000. Compared with the year 2000, the number of registered private cars ran to 2.121 million and grew by 148.07% in theyear 2007
[15]
. These data make it clear that the increase of roadlength cannot meet the demand of ever-increasing registeredvehicles. Therefore, frequent traffic jams are created by thecontradiction between the vehicles’ large travel demand andthe limited urban roads.
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