North Artery to Ease Traffic Stress

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 ◆ North Artery to Ease Traffic Stress

Beijing residents in the northern suburbs will happily bid farewell to time-consuming traffic as an artery road near the planned Olympic Village will be finished next month. Workers are busy with construction at the bottleneck of the road, which crosses the north sections of the forth, fifth and sixth ring roads of the city. Most parts have been completed for one or two years but the entire road was put on hold because of this bottleneck section that links Lishui Bridge, about 7 kilometres north of the Fourth Ring Road near the Olympic Forest Park. The local transport authorities said several public undertakings including a subway and a light rail have converged at the bridge and it will take some time to finish the whole project. They said about 20 residential communities have been constructed near the road. In conjunction to the project, the western part of the city's light railway system will be finished on September 28. About 20.62 kilometres long, the portion links Xizhimen in the inner city and Huilongguan, a large residence community on the northern outskirts. In addition, Beijing plans to construct eight public transport centres to improve its passenger handling capacity and ease traffic congestion in the city. Three communication centres are being built at Xizhimen, Dongzhimen and near the Beijing Zoo. Five others are planned for major districts, according to the Beijing Youth Daily. Upon completion, these projects will increase the city's bus traffic to 4.1 billion passenger trips annually by 2005, accounting for 38 percent of the city's total. Passengers will have a choice between urban buses, long-distance buses, trains or urban light railways at several communication centres including Xizhimen, Dongzhimen and the planned centres at Liuliqiao, Sihui and the Western Railway Station. At the Dongzhimen transport centre, for example, passengers can take buses covering 18 different routes, or travel by light railway or subway.