A new regulation promising a firmer grip on Shanghai's outdoor advertisement facilities will be kicked off in next February.

The new regulation will replace a former 1991 version, said Jiao Yang, spokeswoman for the city government, at a press conference yesterday.

The rules will bring some 20,000 outdoor billboards under better control and stipulate standards for the future ones.

"More than 9,000 inappropriate outdoor billboards in the city, either in improper position or too big, will be either renovated or taken down," said Liu Weiguang, an official from the Shanghai City Appearance and Environmental Sanitation Bureau.

"This is an effort to make the city more beautiful and safer in the run-up to the World Expo which will be held in Shanghai in 2010."

Shanghai started a campaign to remove potentially unsafe outdoor billboards in the middle of last year after some fell in windy weather.

"Five accidents involving outdoor billboards happened from July to September," said Liu.

"In addition, huge billboards standing just beside the elevated highway disturb drivers and might cause accidents too."

More than 120 billboards within 100 meters of the elevated highway within the Inner Ring Road were taken down by September.

Liu said the district governments will compensate those companies whose billboards are still within the lease contract but have to be taken down.

A regular safety check and renovation of the billboards are required under the new rules.

"Any billboards more than two years old must be checked every year before June 1, usually the beginning of the city's flood season," said Liu.

"The penalty for not conducting the check could be up to 30,000 yuan (US$3,600)."

The regulation also established a bidding system as the only way to lease billboards.

"The bureau is responsible for signing the contract and collecting rentals from the lessee, which will be used to pay the supervision and administration costs involved," said Liu.

At the press conference, Jiao Yang also mentioned another regulation on car pool management to be released soon.

The regulation aims to alleviate the high pressure on city's car pool, especially those in the downtown area, said Jiao.

"The price of a parking space within the Inner Ring Road and outside it, and that of peak time and non-peak time could be very different," said Jiao.

"And to urge the drivers to park cars in designated spaces instead of parking them by the sidewalk to save money, the charge for parking along the road will be much higher.

"It is also a measure to bring traffic in the downtown area during rush hours under better control."

Jiao said that although the city lacks parking space - some six spaces have to accommodate 10 cars on average - some parking pools are not fully employed, even at peak time.

"To put all the spaces to full and more reasonable use, we will encourage all pool owners, both the public ones and private ones, to link themselves to a car pool network, which will show the drivers where they could park."

(China Daily December 23, 2004)