Organizers of the Olympics said yesterday Beijing would ban half the city’s vehicles from the roads during the Games.
Vehicles will be allowed on the road on alternate days — depending on even or odd registration numbers — for a two-month period from July 20 until Sept. 20.
Taxis, buses and emergency vehicles are exempted. Some heavy polluting vehicles and those carrying dangerous substances will be banned altogether beginning on July 1.
PHOTO: AFP
The plan will also prohibit most vehicles entering he city from outside Beijing. These vehicles will need special permits and will need to meet air quality standards.
The Beijing Olympics take place from Aug. 8 to Aug. 24 followed by the Paralympics from Sept. 6 to Sept. 17.
A similar plan was tested last summer in a four-day period. Beijing officials were set to unveil the complete plan later yesterday.
Five days after the July 20 ban goes into effect, special Olympic traffic lanes will begin operating and will stay in place until Sept. 25. The city will set aside 265km of roadway, where certified Olympic vehicles will be allowed to move from hotels, Olympic venues and the Athletes Village. The average speed is expected to be 35kph.
Setting aside special lanes, which has been done in previous Olympics, is the only way to move traffic through Beijing’s chaotic, crowded road system.
Beijing officials announced several months ago that during the same two-month period, most construction in the city will halt, heavy industries will close and even spray painting will stop — all measures meant to clean Beijing’s notoriously polluted air.
Some reports have suggested that production cutbacks will come even sooner.
A deadly earthquake last month and fierce, pro-Tibet protests on international legs of the Olympic torch relay have removed some of the scrutiny from Beijing’s chronic air pollution. However, air quality still remains an issue for the Games.
Many international athletes are choosing to train away from Beijing and enter just before competing, and others may wear facemasks while moving around the city. The world’s greatest distance runner, Haile Gebrselassie of Ethiopia, has decided not to run the Olympic marathon because the city’s pollution irritates his breathing.
International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge has said outdoor endurance events lasting more than an hour will be postponed if air quality is poor.
The Philippines yesterday said its coast guard would acquire 40 fast patrol craft from France, with plans to deploy some of them in disputed areas of the South China Sea. The deal is the “largest so far single purchase” in Manila’s ongoing effort to modernize its coast guard, with deliveries set to start in four years, Philippine Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Ronnie Gil Gavan told a news conference. He declined to provide specifications for the vessels, which Manila said would cost 25.8 billion pesos (US$440 million), to be funded by development aid from the French government. He said some of the vessels would
CARGO PLANE VECTOR: Officials said they believe that attacks involving incendiary devices on planes was the work of Russia’s military intelligence agency the GRU Western security officials suspect Russian intelligence was behind a plot to put incendiary devices in packages on cargo planes headed to North America, including one that caught fire at a courier hub in Germany and another that ignited in a warehouse in England. Poland last month said that it had arrested four people suspected to be linked to a foreign intelligence operation that carried out sabotage and was searching for two others. Lithuania’s prosecutor general Nida Grunskiene on Tuesday said that there were an unspecified number of people detained in several countries, offering no elaboration. The events come as Western officials say
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
RSS