It's Official: Beijing Has China's Longest Commute Times

Dan Edwards | Jun 7, 2010 5:00 pm | 2 comments | 5763 reads

Here’s one record Beijing could do without – according to today’s China Daily we have the “longest commutes of any city dwellers in China, spending an average of one hour to and from work.”

To be more precise, a report by the Chinese Academy of Sciences released over the weekend found that Beijingers spend an average of 52 minutes commuting. Coming in behind the capital were, “the southern economic hub of Guangzhou, the eastern financial center of Shanghai and the booming southern city of Shenzhen… with 48, 47 and 46 minutes, respectively.”

As we demonstrated back in early 2009, riding a bicycle is still nearly always the fastest way to get around Beijing, but with ever-increasing traffic and intractable pollution problems cycling is far from hassle free.

The China Daily article quotes one commuter who claims a five kilometer cab ride to her place of work takes 40 minutes, while "riding a bus to the subway station is even more time-consuming. When I just decided to switch back to a bike lately, the news said that air pollution is unbearable in the city.”

After choking on today’s foul smog as I pedaled to work this morning, I can't help but agree with her.

Comments

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Re: It's Official: Beijing Has China's Longest Commute Times
Posted Jun 7, 2010 9:17pm by peach12

Yup.

Every intersection should have police on it until people get it into their thick heads to COOPERATE on the roads and not try to beat everyone else... maybe 1 in 20 you will win. But the other 19 times you will lose.

More fines and larger ones too. MANY cities in the world have the same traffic density as Beijing but they don't have this problem.

I place the blame squarely on all the people that buy their licences, drive like they do pretty much everything else when it comes to interactions with others (Be selfish) and generally think that every mistake of theirs should be others to pay for (back up and take the exit, cut across to make the exit, stop and think in middle of intersection.....)

I think Shanghai and ShenZhen are MUCH better than Beijing. Much better.

Statistics are not needed - just have a look at how people conduct themselves when on the road. Like little school children.

http://zhaopianblog.com.cn/
http://www.utilitycomputing.com.cn

Re: It's Official: Beijing Has China's Longest Commute Times
Posted Jun 7, 2010 8:52pm by mikecafs

It seems to me that much of the problem has less to do with the number of cars on the road and more with the desire of every driver to ignore traffic signals (blocking the box as we say in the US) and also the lack of a police directing traffic in those places/giving tickets.