Ruan said without controls the streets in Wenzhou would be hard to improve in a situation where roads need 30 percent construction and 70 percent management. During the building of traffic facilities, a regulated use of roads by people is a low-cost and efficient measure to resolve traffic jams and make full use of highway resources. Connecting all the main roads and crossroads in the old downtown area of Wenzhou would cost at least 2 billion yuan (US$241.34 million) and without proper administration, the transportation would still be a mess as the better the streets are, the faster the vehicles go and the more likely accidents are to occur. Ruan added that measures cannot succeed without citizens’ support.

Wenzhou’s traffic facilities have developed at a fast rate in recent years, and the per capita road space increased 2.5 times in less than 10 years, from 4.7 square meters (about 5.6 square yards) in 1993 to 11.5 square meters (13.8 square yards) last year, but street construction cannot yet meet the demand. Some 400,000 people in the city have been going to work and returning home at the same time, which accounts for one-sixth of the whole day’s traffic flow and -- of course -- causes traffic jams. To deal with the problem, the local departments, after much research, invited experts from Tsinghua University to plan city zones’ traffic administration. On March 4, the city led the province of Zhejiang in implementing the staggered work-hour system. After over one month operation, the system resolved traffic blocks in the city and received all-round praise.

Experts said in the TV program that the staggered work-hour system is suitable for cities where the traffic flow rate differs greatly between rush hour and other times and that the measure provides a fine example for future traffic administration.

(温州都市报 [Wenzhou City Paper] by Chen Zhong, translated by Feng Yikun for china.org.cn, May 9, 2002))