自行車迴歸,能否拯救北京交通

Living in Beijing in the early 2000s, I had one laborious chore every morning before I could ride my bike to school: pulling it out from my neighbors’ bicycles, which were stacked together like turkey meat in a sandwich and stretched out into an endless line. It was a time when 40% of people in China, known as the “kingdom of bicycles, ” cycled to work and school.
本世紀初那幾年住在北京時，我每天早上騎車上學前都要幹一件體力活：把我的自行車從附近左鄰右里的一堆車子中生拉硬拽出來，這些車子堆放在一起像極了三明治裏的土耳其烤肉，而且綿延無邊的陣仗又一眼望不到頭。那時四成的中國居民都騎車上班和上學，中國又稱“自行車王國”。

Now, as Beijing’s 19 million residents and 5.3 million cars turn highways into parking lots and subways into sardine tins, the municipal government is urgently calling for a comeback of the old-school bicycle. In June of last year, 2, 000 public bikes appeared in two downtown districts in Beijing. With a refundable security deposit, Beijing citizens may rent the bikes free of charge for the first hour and for 1 RMB, or 16 U.S. cents, an hour afterward. A year later, the government has added another 12, 000 bicycles in five outer-suburb districts. The goal is to quadruple that figure in the next two years, raising the usage rate of bicycles in the city to above 20%.
現在，隨着北京的1,900萬居民和530萬輛汽車將高速路變成停車場，將地鐵變成沙丁魚罐頭，北京市政府緊急呼籲老派的自行車迴歸。去年6月，2,000輛公共自行車出現在北京的兩個商業區裏。交上一筆可退還的押金後，北京市民就可以租借這些自行車了，第一個小時免費，之後每小時收費1元（約合16美分）。一年後，北京市政府在五環外的郊區又增加投放了1.2萬輛自行車。目標是在接下來兩年裏令這一數字增長三倍，將北京的自行車使用率提高到20%以上。

The cycling scheme is intended to fill gaps in Beijing’s public transit network, reduce congestion, and improve air quality. But to any Beijinger who once saw the upgrade from bikes to cars as an iconic step-up into the middle-class ranks, this program is an ironic reminder of the country’s blind pursuit of GDP growth. It is an example of the government’s lack of foresight in dealing with the side effects of economic policies: When tax reductions and cash subsidies were issued in 2009 to stimulate automobile consumption, the government probably didn’t expect citizens to hoard 1.6 million new cars in just two years and completely clog Beijing’s roads. New regulations had to be adopted to limit the number of cars. And now, the city government is betting on the public bicycles, an increasingly popular choice of transportation in cosmopolitan cities such as Paris and New York, and in domestic cities such as Hangzhou, where 70, 000 bikes are rented 260, 000 times daily.
這個騎車方案意在彌補北京公共交通網絡的空白，減少擁堵，並改善空氣質量。但是對任何曾把汽車代步視爲邁入中產階級標誌的北京人來說，這一項目頗具諷刺性地讓人想起了中國對GDP增長的盲目追求。這是政府在應對經濟政策的副作用時缺乏前瞻性的一個例子：2009年當頒佈刺激汽車消費的減稅和現金補貼政策時，政府可能沒有料到市民們會在僅僅兩年的時間裏囤積了160萬輛新汽車，而且完全阻塞了北京的大街小巷。後來又不得不採取新規，對汽車數量加以限制。而如今，北京市政府正把希望押在了公共自行車身上。在像巴黎和紐約等國際性大都市裏，自行車成爲了日漸受歡迎的出行選擇，而且在像杭州這樣的國內城市裏，7萬輛自行車的每日租借次數有26萬之多。

But will public bicycles provide the much needed antidote for Beijing’s traffic woes? The program’s performance has not been very impressive so far. According to the Beijing Municipal Commission of Transportation, 170, 000 rentals were recorded in the past year, meaning the average rental frequency is less than once a day for each bike. Comparatively, rental frequency in Hangzhou was more than three times a day a year into the program.
但是公共自行車能否爲北京的交通頑疾送上一劑急需的良藥？到目前爲止，該項目還沒有非常令人印象深刻的表現。根據北京市交通委員會的數據，去年公共自行車租借了17萬次，這意味着平均每輛自行車的租借頻率不到一天一次。相比之下，杭州該項目運營一年下來，每輛自行車的租借頻率超過每日三次。

One key problem that bicycles cannot solve in Beijing is transportation to downtown from the outer suburbs. The national census shows that by 2010, 40% of Beijing’s population lived in the city’s 10 suburban districts, which are simply too far away from the city center to make bike-riding feasible. For instance, Tongzhou District in the southeast corner, connected to downtown by one of Beijing’s most jammed highways, is at least 50 minutes away by bike. As more white-collar workers move to the suburbs for their lower housing prices, transportation to downtown will become only a bigger challenge.
在北京，自行車關鍵不能解決從遠郊到市中心的交通問題。全國人口普查顯示，到2010年時，40%的北京人口居住在北京的十個郊區，這些地方離市中心太遠，使得騎車並不可行。例如，北京東南角的通州（這裏連接市中心的道路是北京最擁堵的路段之一）到市中心騎車至少需要五十分鐘。隨着越來越多的公司白領受到房價較低的吸引而搬到了郊區，到市中心的交通問題將只會成爲一個更大的挑戰。

What’s more, Beijing’s rapidly deteriorating environment is not welcoming to outdoor activities. On a good day, the city’s particulate concentration level is equal to the worst of New York City, where the new network of Citi Bikes now stretches over lower- to mid-Manhattan and part of Brooklyn; on a bad day, three times New York’s. The Beijing government faces a paradox: The cycling program partially serves the purpose of reducing pollution, but its popularity may be largely dependent on the city’s current air quality.
更何況，北京迅速惡化的環境也不適宜戶外活動。好天氣裏，北京空氣中的微粒濃度相當於紐約的最差水平——在紐約，新的花旗自行車（Citi Bikes）網絡現在延伸到了曼哈頓中下城以及布魯克林的部分地區；壞天氣裏，北京的微粒濃度是紐約的三倍。北京市政府面臨着一個悖論：推行騎車項目部分是爲了降低污染，但它的受歡迎度可能在很大程度上取決於北京當前的空氣質量。