Research Of Wenzhou City Traffic Congestion Management

With the rapid development of social economy, China’s automobile industry has gained a mushroom growth. As the main mean of transportation, private cars have found their way into innumerable families. The advent of the age of the automobile renders the city road incapable of carrying too much traffic volume. Now adays, both driving and parking have become even more difficult and the contradiction among pedestrians, vehicles, roads have become the common problems faced by domestic metropolis and traffic congestion has become one of factors restricting economic development, social harmony, and quality of life.To effectively alleviate the pressure of the rapid increase in vehicles, in recent years, many cities in China are actively seeking measures to ease traffic pressure, such as, re-planning urban layout, speeding up the traffic hardware construction, implementing scientific management, improving traffic order, giving propriety to public transport development and so on.From the point of view of the traffic management police, the author holds that traffic management is a comprehensive programme, as projects such as urban planning and hardware construction would take some time, it is considered to be a long term programme. In the short term, strengthening the punishment for violation of traffic laws will relieve the present situation of traffic congestion to some extent. Based on the experience of traffic management in Wenzhou City, large-scale traffic tie-up is caused by disorderly parking, irregular changing lanes, disorganized turning around, pedestrians, illegally crossing roadway by non-motor vehicles and other bad traffic habits. Therefore, resolving urban traffic congestion calls for a collaboration of measures taken simultaneously so as to achieve optimum congestion control effect.As the functional department of traffic management, traffic police departments of public security bureau across the country have take specific management measures according to the local actual situations to vigorously fight against violation of traffic laws seriously affecting the traffic order. In early2013, Zhejiang Province launched a five-year project for solving urban traffic congestion and put the traffic management at the top of ten people’s livelihood projects. In the first year of implementing the project, some actions were conducted to mainly punish the serious violation of urban road traffic laws, with great emphasis put on clampdown8serious violations of urban road traffic laws including running the red light by vehicles and pedestrians, drunk driving, illegally parking, over-speeding (drag racing), violating prohibitory signs, illegally using bus lanes, illegally crossing queuing vehicles at intersections and crossing the intersection by pedestrians without walking along the crosswalk.However, compared with the huge expansion of city size and the surge of number of motor vehicles and drivers, the growth of the number of traffic police, especially those at important crowded roads has lagged behind them greatly. At the Chinese and foreign press conference following the closing meet of the twelfth session of the National People’s Congress (NPC), Premier Li Keqiang made a three-point agreement, stressing the total number of government employees was to be reduced. Under the circumstances that the number of civil servants is strictly controlled, the problem of inadequate traffic police at important crowded roads will remain existed in the future.In June2004,"to strengthen social construction and management, and promote social management system innovation" was put forward in the Fourth Plenary Session of the Sixteenth Central Committee; In October2007, the Report of the17th National Congress of CPC proposed "to establish the structure of social management comprising Party committee leadership, government responsibility, nongovernmental support and public participation"; In November2012, in the18th National Congress of CPC, it was put forwarded that "we should quicken the pace of building the following mechanisms and systems:a law-based social management system featuring Party committee leadership, government execution, nongovernmental support and public participation." According to its report, the government departments concerned should perform their duties, try their best, strengthen investigation and research, make innovations in work and study measures to continuously improve the level of social management. Besides, it is important to rely firmly on and mobilize the people to participate in social management so that the matters for which the society should be responsible will be completed by the society, and people’s matter will be in the charge themselves.In2013special action to resolve traffic congestion in Wenzhou City, it understood the situation clearly, adjusted measures according to local conditions, fully tapped social resources and mobilized social forces to participate in the action and as a result, substantial achievements were made. During this activity, tens of thousands of "traffic adviser" participated in helping traffic police to keep traffic in order, thousands of cars provided free rides and "brain trust for easing congestion" composed of experts gave suggestions for traffic management. All these measures not only help eased traffic congestion, but also effectively made up for the deficiency of the police. In2013with the joint efforts of all aspects, Wenzhou made remarkable achievements in reducing congestion. By the end of December2013, its urban traffic congestion alert situation fell by12.66%on year-on-year basis, the average driving speed on19arterial traffic roads in the evening peak time decreased by16.69%, and the average section driving speed on8arterial traffic roads at urban traffic flow testing area in the evening peak time reached29.7kilometers per hour, an increase of10%compared to the same period of previous year. In the assessment of control of serious violation of urban road traffic laws conducted by Zhejiang Public Security Department, Wenzhou ranked first among the cites including "Hangzhou, Ningbo and Whenzhou" was in the second place in11cities of Zhejiang Province.Whenzhou’s success in mobilizing social resources in reducing congestion provides valuable experiences for reference and study for other cities in the country in the new situation of mobilizing social forces to participate in traffic management and effectively alleviate traffic pressure. However, there are shortcomings, and we need to carefully summarize and further perfect this measure.