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Urban Transport in China: Whither the Bicycle?

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China’s Economic Growth

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Abstract

The bicycle is to China what the car is to America. For many visitors, that is part of the country’s attraction; as compared with other Asian countries, Chinese cities appear to offer (almost literally) a breath of fresh air:

Tianjin, a city of 8.5 million, devotes a meagre 4.8 per cent of its land area to streets and roads. It is experiencing explosive growth with industrial output, housing supply and the bus fleet all increasing by 70 per cent between 1980 and 1988. Most megacities experiencing such conditions would exhibit massive traffic congestion, major transport related air pollution problems, high traffic accident rates, and high transportation investment and operations costs … Tianjin, which relies on non-motorised vehicles for four out of ten person-trips, instead has high mobility, few traffic congestion problems, very low traffic accident rates, very low public and personal cash expenditures with only modest time expenditures for transport. (Thornhill 1991, quoted by Replogle 1992, p. 20)

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Authors
  1. Andrew Spencer
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Greenwich, London, UK

    Terry Cannon (Reader in Development Studies) (Reader in Development Studies)

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© 2000 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited

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Spencer, A. (2000). Urban Transport in China: Whither the Bicycle?. In: Cannon, T. (eds) China’s Economic Growth. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780333977392_9

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