{"id":161183384,"date":"2010-02-09T13:09:44","date_gmt":"2010-02-09T13:09:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/?p=161183384"},"modified":"2010-02-09T13:09:44","modified_gmt":"2010-02-09T13:09:44","slug":"back-to-bicycling-basics-in-beijing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/?p=161183384","title":{"rendered":"Back to Bicycling Basics in Beijing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>According to The Guardian, 20 years ago, four out of five Beijing residents pedaled around China\u2019s capital in some of the world\u2019s best bike lanes.  However, this number has decreased as private car ownership has gone up. From 1995 to 2005, China\u2019s bike fleet declined by 35 percent while private car ownership more than doubled. Beijing is currently home to four million cars. Last year, China overtook the U.S. in auto sales, with a 46 percent increase in sales over the previous year.  As cities in China have grown, bike lanes have also been eliminated to accommodate more traffic lanes for cars and buses.  By all indications, it\u2019s seemed that Beijing was well on its way to usher in a new king \u2013 the automobile.<br \/>\nBut is the city of 17 million ready for king car?  Perhaps not, as Beijing\u2019s air quality continues to be poor (last week BeijingAir\u2019s monitoring station reported a few \u2018hazardous\u2019 air quality days). Liu Xiaoming, the director of the Municipal Communications Commission, said in a Xinhua article that the government will \u201crevise and eliminate\u201d regulations that discourage bicycle use and impose greater restrictions on car drivers.  Beijing already has limitations to reduce the number of vehicles on the road, continuing the odd-even license plate policy after its successful implementation during the 2008 Olympics. (And read my post about Beijing\u2019s ban on \u201cyellow label\u201d vehicles here.)<br \/>\nThe government also plans to restore bicycle lanes that were torn down, as well as to build more parking lots for bicycles at bus and subway stations to encourage additional cycling.<br \/>\n&#8230;<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/thecityfix.com\/back-to-bicycling-basics-in-beijing\/\">https:\/\/thecityfix.com\/back-to-bicycling-basics-in-beijing\/<\/a><br \/>\nOlder article &quot;Cars conquering the Bicycle Kingdom&quot; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baltimorespokes.org\/article.php?story=20070204092429319\">https:\/\/www.baltimorespokes.org\/article.php?story=20070204092429319<\/a>oldId.20100209130944915<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>According to The Guardian, 20 years ago, four out of five Beijing residents pedaled around China\u2019s capital in some of the world\u2019s best bike lanes. However, this number has decreased as private car ownership has gone up. From 1995 to 2005, China\u2019s bike fleet declined by 35 percent while private car ownership more than doubled. &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/?p=161183384\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Back to Bicycling Basics in Beijing&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-161183384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biking-elsewhere"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161183384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=161183384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161183384\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=161183384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=161183384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=161183384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}