With the growing development of Chinese economy,the urbanization of China is rapid and the population concentrates into metropolitans.With the economic reformation the people's economic and cultural activities are more frequent than before and floating population and motor vehicles doubles.Although transportation construction in cities is under developing,it still cannot satisfy the demand.Therefore,vehicles in many cities become slower and slower nowadays,while concentration of poison gases in the air,such as nitric oxidant become higher and higher every year,which threaten the urban environment and health of residents greatly.

　　Thus,sustainable development of urban transportation has been the focus of the Transport and Environment Working Group (TWG) during 1998 and deep research on the issue of sustainable development of urban transport has been carried out by the Working Group.

　　1. Activities of the Transport Working Group 

　　1.1 Based on broad investigation,7 cities, Beijing,Shanghai, Chongqing, Guangzhou, Guiyang, Shenzhen,Dalian,were selected as important cities and the current status of transportation and environment,experiences and existing problems in each city were required to be reported.After the fully preparation by the 7 cities,"Urban Transport and Environment Workshop"was held in Beijing from March 30 to April 1.Representatives of 7 cities and Hong Kong SAR from three related departments including urban planning,transport management and environmental protection,attended the workshop.Experts from German,Switzerland,USA,India and Japan participated the meeting too.During the meeting,participants exchanged their experiences in solving the urban transport and environment problems,and further discussed treating strategies and advice,which provides basic reference for submitting the proposals to the Annual Council meeting.After the workshop,"The Proceedings of Urban Transport and Environment Workshop" has been compiled and it has been distributed to 42 big or medium municipal governments to collect their comments.

　　1.2 On April 2,1999,the second plenary meeting of TWG was held on the basis of the advice of representatives in each city.After the impassioned discussion of the domestic and international experts,the outline of Proposals on urban transport and environment has been drafted out.And the outline was further perfected on the third plenary meeting in June according to the European study tour.

　　1.3 With reference to the working plan of this year,the European study tour was carried out from June 4 to 18,1999 by all the TWG members.The visit to several typical European countries,such as Holland,Germany,Switzerland and Czech has further improved the knowledge on solving the urban transport and environmental problems.

　　1.4 The third plenary meeting was held from June 15 to 16 in Wuppertal of Germany.On the basis of experiences gained from the study tour,following the discussion of all the experts,the original outline of the Proposal was revised.At the meeting the work emphases of next year has also been figured out:the international and domestic experts will make investigations and study on the integrated transportation and highway transportation separately.

　　1.5 The proposal,"How to Improve Chinese City Transport and Environment"(first draft)was first formulated at the end of June in terms of expert members opinions after the third plenary meeting,which was a collection of the opinions from various experts in written form again.

　　1.6 The draft was posted to 42 big and mediumsized municipal government,such as Beijing,Shanghai and Chongqing on July 26,1999,for local comments.At present 9 cities including Beijing,Wuhan and Guangzhou etc.has replied and put forward many useful opinions.

　  In order to make international experts further learn our country's current transport situation and make their opinions fit Chinese conditions,TWG has decided to organize them for a study tour on transport and environment in Beijing and Dalian.

　　2.Future Working Plan TWG will mainly deal with the sustainable inter

　　city transportation(integrated transportation)while putting special emphasis on highway transportation.The work will be done from 10/1999 to 4/2000.The study on integrated transportation will be carried out jointly by Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences and Tsinghua University and international members of the Transport working Group.The study of highway transportation will be accomplished by Science and Technology Information Institute of Ministry of Communications.2.1 Integrated planning aims at maximizing the benefits for the society by making use of the resources of various transport modes.For interurban transport,road,rail,inland navigation and air transport are those modes that have to be looked at with respect to the capacities and the cost (investments,operational cost,including external cost).Each mode has specific advantages and cost that in an integrated approach are optimized by developing the most appropriate mode for specific tasks.

　　2.2 TWG will evaluate the related planning documents upon the aspects of roads and railways.The integrated analysis will be made on the basis of the documents.

　　Special attention in the evaluation of the planning documents will be laid upon the aspects of intermodality and trans-modality.Intermodality aims at creating links between road and rail,road and inland navigation etc.In order to enable goods to be transported via various modes,making use of the special advantages of each mode.Transmodality means the use of joint planning data and planning procedures for road and inland navigation,in order to evaluate possibilities to substitute investments in one mode with better economic efficiency in another mode.

　　A second focus of the planning document analysis will be the integration of various policy areas.Transport policy touches economic planning,planning of housing and settlements,urban development,environmental planning,social issues,etc.Often there are conflicting targets between transport infrastructure construction and agriculture,water management etc.The documents should deal with other areas in a comprehensive manner. 

　　2.3 Focus on highway,Institute of Science and Technology Information of Communications Ministry will choose 4 pilot Provinces & Cities and 4 reports will be drafted by the Provincial and Municipal Transportation Bureau.At the beginning of next year,domestic experts will be organized for a field visit.

　　2.4 Workshop on intercity transport and environment will be held in July 2000.

　　3. Pilot Project 

　　With the help of GTZ,TWG and the German VW Company experts will evaluate VW's newly developed air pollution control model on Oct.22 and Beijing will be invited to join the discussion.

　　4. Proposals on How to Improve Urban Transport and Environmental Problems of P.R.C. 

　　A.Objectives 

　　The development of urban transport should comply with the national sustainable development strategy.The urban transport policies should be in support of the social economic development in the urban area,meet the residents'increasing needs of transport and help to improve environmental quality.The following facts have to be considered:

　　- With social economic development in urban area,the need of travel and the freight transportation will keep increasing. 

　　- The increase of the urban economy depends on the safe,efficient and economical urban transportation system. 

　　- The current urban transportation system has caused serious traffic congestion and the emission of the vehicle has become one of the main pollution sources in the big cities of China. 

　　- Though mitigating the vehicle emission is one of the key measures for air pollution control,the evident effect can also been reached by optimizing the urban transportation system.In a word,the overall,integrated,active actions adopted by the municipal and central government are required to keep the harmonious development in urban transport and social economy in order to reach the following objectives: The urban development should comply with the sustainable strategy set by the state.

　　The increase need of inhabitant's travel and freight transportation can be met and at the same time the urban environment and transportation situation can be improved. 

　　The urban economic development can be supported by the urban transport policy to develop the urban transport and social economy harmoniously. 

　　B.Problems of Urban Transport 

　　a. Air pollution

　　The vehicle emission in some big cities has contributed over 60% for many items of air pollutants.Transport pollution control has become one of the major tasks of the urban air pollution control.

　　b.Resource consumption

　　The urban transport,especially the private motorizing transport consumes a great amount of energy and other nonrenewable resources.

　　c.Traffic accident

　　The traffic accidents in the urban area bring about a great number of human bodily injuries and great amount of direct economic losses.

　　d.Noise pollution

　　The noise pollution on the both sides of the main roads in the urban areas is pricking up.Over 80% of the big cities of China exceed the noise limit in the main transport routes(over 70dB(A)),which seriously effect the rest,education and cultural activities of the residents.

　　e.Occupation of spatial resources

　　The urban transport occupies lots of lands and spaces,such as roads,parking lots.The private motorizing transport will increase the conflicts between the land use and land resources.

　　f.Waste of the time resources

　　The traffic congestion,especially the mixed transportation of motorvehicle and nonmotor vehicle has rapidly decreased the traffic speed.In some big cities the time loss caused by traffic congestion has come to over 1,000,000 people/hr.The irrational transport structure creates huge time cost.

　　The above problems cause great amount of national economy loss,hindering the healthy development of urban social,economic and environment.

　　C.Strategic policy proposals 

　　a.The development of the urban transport needs the combined efforts made by the municipal and central governments.Under the directive of the regulations,macro policy and industrial policy,the municipal government ought to play key roles.

　　b.Strengthen the coordination among the sectors.The coordination institution consisting of urban planning,urban construction,transport management,public service,environment protection should be set up to formulate and enforce the urban transport policy.Strengthen the formulation of the urban transport regulations.The formulation,enforcement,supervision of the urban transport laws and regulations should be strengthened and the Urban Public Transport Laws should be adopted soon.　Emphasize on making use of the science and technology.Enhance scientific study to support the government's related measures with scientific evidences.

　　c.Emphasize on the transport pricing instruments.The urban transport pricing policy should support the sustainable development of transport.The transport taxes and levies income ought to be helpful to improve the environmental transport modes such as public transportation and the development and operation of the bicycle transport.

　　d.Great importance should be attached on the public education in the environment and transport.The education of the citizens,especially the primary and middle school students on transport regulations and safety should be popularized to improve the public awareness on transport and environment .Encourage the resident to adopt the transportation modes beneficial to the environment and resources saving.

　　D.Proposed measures 

　　a.Public transport priority should be popularized on a big scale.The public transport should not only be developed with the policy and investment supports but also in the transport management,road usage and signal lights control.

　　b.The protection of the bicycle and pedestrian transport should be emphasized.The bicycle lanes should be perfected at the same time of encouraging the bicycle transport to transfer to the efficient public transport.The usage of bicycle should be limited within certain distances and the management of the bicycle transport should be strengthened.

　　c.The railway transport modes should be developed.The electric track transportation have the advantages of large carrying capacity and little pollution.The eligible metropolis can develop their subway system;big and medium city can build ground light railway and make use of the existing railway(iron railway)and develop the train to outskirts.

　　d.The private motorizing transport modes should be leaded to use in a rational way.The car used in the downtown of big city should be limited and travelling for official duty should be reduced step by step,the possessing and using of motorcycles and mopeds causing serious pollution ought be rigidly controlled.A high external cost caused by the private motorizing transport tools should be paid by the income of tax policy.

　　e.Implement the overall urban planning to rationalize the land usage structure as well as the land exploitation and try to decrease the transport demand.The big city should remain a compact model of the land use distribution,which is helpful for shortening passenger's transport distance,reducing the traffic flow and developing public transportation.

　　f.The coordinating development between innercity transport and intercity transport should be strengthened.Regarding hinges and nodes of urban transportation net work,more attention should be paid to the harmonious arrangement between the urban and external transport system in time and space to take advantages of various combined transportation modes.

　　g.Transport pollution control should be strengthened.The Environmental Impact Assessment(EIA) ought to be regarded as one of the prerequisites of judging urban transport policy and engineering construction;actively extending the technique of Strategic Impact Assessment(SEA).

　　h.Give major effort to the test/maintenance(I/M)system of inuse vehicles to keep them in normal technical situation.Policies and measures should be adopted by the governments of big cities to encourage the disuse and retrofit of inuse vehicles(especially the twostroke engines of twowheelers)based on the national standard;establish the exhaust emission control plan for inuse vehicles to meet the national or domestic emission standard within 2 or 3 years' operation.Mitigate and Control the traffic noise pollution.

　　i.Strengthen the urban transport management.Improve the level and scientific capacity of the urban transport management and popularize the application of new techniques.Regionally implement the Control and Command system and rationally organize and manage the traffic flow to increase the passing capacity of the existing road networks.

　　j.Further improve the fueloil quality and popularize the usage of unleaded gasoline.Put the fueloil tax into practice soon and raise the gasoline and diesel tax in a big margin,especially the tax for the low quality fuel.Part of the tax revenues ought be used for the development of public transportation.

　　E.The integrated pilot project on the improvement of urban transport and environment 

　　Three cities including Shenzhen,Dalian,Kunming,are proposed as the integrated pilot cities on the transport and environment.Joint effort can be made by TWG and municipal governments to popularize and test the above proposed policies and measures. 