The Chinese Traffic Scene

From a NYT MiniBlog:

I’m in Guangzhou, China’s third largest city, for an “International Symposium on Analysis and Countermeasures of Traffic Congestion in Urban Centers.” Although the talks run the transportation gamut from infrastructure to travel-demand management, the purpose of the meeting is to explore congestion pricing as a possible antidote to traffic that is snarling China’s booming cities.

Guangzhou’s new Bus Rapid Transit system is barely a month old, yet its high-speed service, with pre-paid boarding and exclusive lanes, is already attracting 800,000 passengers a day — half as many people as ride New York City transit buses. Five subway lines have been built since 1999, and four more are slated to open in the next several years. I toured these facilities this week and also saw real-time traffic information systems that dispatch buses and taxis and help police clear traffic crashes.

Yet this dizzying growth in smart transit infrastructure is unlikely to stem the deterioration in Guangzhou’s traffic conditions. The share of streets rated with severe congestion was measured at 38 percent last year, up from 33 percent in 2008 and 28 percent in 2007. Drivers, truckers and riders on conventional buses are paying a steep price in lost time.

With double-digit rises in car ownership and the city’s relentless expansion outpacing even the rapid provision of transit, the idea of charging a toll to drive into Guangzhou’s city center is gaining traction. The rationale is clear: drivers who pay only for their own lost time but not for the time their trips take from other drivers have little incentive to prioritize trips by car.

Traffic congestion is a sign of impending deflation. We need a metropolitan traffic congestion index.

I am a human search engine! This site monitors traffic congestion with a news feed. Leading to this article:

Data from GPS users show that of all host cities in this year's basketball tournament, Houston tops the field with the longest persistent traffic jam, averaging 8.5 miles every day on Texas 6

Then leading to this:

The results were calculated using data from Speed Profiles(TM), the historical speed database from TomTom's licensing business unit Tele Atlas that helps personal and professional fleet drivers find the best routes. Speed Profiles aggregates, anonymously, the actual speeds that millions of GPS-enabled drivers have traveled over the last two years to provide the most accurate view of average speeds on both primary and secondary roads. It is incorporated on TomTom GPS devices as IQ Routes(TM) to guide drivers away from congestion, not only on major highways but on all routes in the road network.

Speed Profiles website.

Speed Profiles is derived from aggregating and processing hundreds of billions of anonymous GPS measurements from millions of devices that reflect actual consumer driving patterns. This consumer data helps determine realistic average roadway speeds for different times of the day and different days of the week. Tele Atlas has Speed Profiles coverage for 5 minute intervals in 26 countries, spanning 35 million kilometers in Europe and North America.