Olympic Clean Up

Shi Hanmin, director of the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau, said that Beijing was expected to invest over $3.29BN in anti pollution measure this year.

"Now Beijing is in the critical phase of pollution control ahead of the Olympics. Investments will be largely increased as expensive and large facilities are built so we estimated that the city will spend more than that of last year."

Beijing vice mayor, Ji Lin, said that Beijing had invested a total of $16BN in the past 10 years to protect environment.

Quote:

"The large-scale environment protection was begun in Beijing in 1998 when the government spent 5.4 billion yuan ($0.7BN) and the sum of spending on it kept increasing. The number reached 10 billion ($1.4BN) in 2005."

However, the number of cars in Beijing now exceeds three million. As such, the government plans to stop using some cars during the Olympic Games to ease the traffic and improve air quality.

Ji said:

"Car control, that is to temporarily ban part of the cars, is necessary both for traffic administration and air pollution control.

But the number is yet to be decided. We need to take reasonable measures which least affect Beijing residents' daily life.

I heard of some experience from past Olympic host cities such as Atlanta.

But to ensure clean air during the Olympics, we have to begin working on it a couple of years ahead.

So we have some other measures to implement now."

Ji also said that the government is going to eliminate 2,580 buses and over 5,000 taxi cabs this year.

An Olympic task in itself!