Most families in Beijing will have their own car by 2020. That is more than 5 million vehicles on the capital's streets.

And you think your commute now is difficult.

But all is not gloom and doom because, according to a compendium issued by the Beijing municipal government, a new transport model will be operating by then.

Among the features:

Six north-south highways to link the ring roads.

Thirteen huge parking lots along the Fifth Ring Road with connecting bus or metro service to downtown.

More subways and bus lines will reach the city's suburbs.

A goal for 2010 in which the closest bus stop downtown will be no more than an eight-minute walk and no bus-to-bus transfer will be longer than 300 meters.

The Beijing Transport Development Compendium, a 57-page report issued by the municipal government, gave a specific blueprint for transport development in the coming 15 years.

According to the compendium, the municipal government spent 140 billion yuan (US$16.8 billion) on transport infrastructure development from 1993 to 2003. That was up to 5.3 percent of Beijing's gross domestic product.

But 80 percent of that money went for transport infrastructure inside the Second Ring Road, where congestion is the worst, both in terms of commercial construction and population.

As a result, the facilities and traffic patterns outside that area were left far behind. The compendium says that more urban public facilities and entertainment sites will be encouraged in newly developed areas beyond the Third Ring Road.

The compendium aims to utilize scientific and reasonable traffic design and development to solve the city's problems without paralyzing future generations' ability to do the same, said Liu Xiaoming, deputy director with the Beijing Municipal Commission for Communication.

The blueprint for the capital follows a philosophy known as transit-orientated development (TOD), a concept indicating an expansion of the urban area in harmony with the layout of traffic infrastructure and facilities.

The concept has been used effectively in many cities in the world, including London, Paris, Tokyo and Seoul.

According to the philosophy, a city is divided into neighborhoods, each with public transport arteries as its primary focus, and the traffic pattern for vehicles built around them.

"TOD adoption is a global tendency in maintaining sustainable development in cities," said Shao Chunfu, a professor at Beijing Jiaotong University.

According to Shao, the urban traffic design used to be subordinate to the city's development. Now it gets priority in guiding urban growth.

However, progress usually takes a decade to show a positive effect, he said.

(China Daily June 14, 2005)