Toward Intelligent Transportation Systems for the 2008 Olympics

8 1094-7167/03/$17.00 © 2003 IEEE IEEE INTELLIGENT SYSTEMS grown significantly over the last decade, from virtually nothing to a network of over 25,000 kilometers crossing the nation. It’s now the second-longest system in the world, behind the United States. Meanwhile, the Chinese automobile industry has expanded explosively over the last few years. It will reach 20 percent of the worldwide automobile market by 2020, assuming a conservative annual increase of 5 percent (the current rate is over 15 percent) and an annual output of 10 million vehicles.1 The driving force behind this growth, the sharply increasing number of passenger vehicles (currently close to 30 percent annually), has made urban traffic congestion an even more urgent problem. So, China is quite naturally shifting its focus from building road infrastructure to developing transportation intelligence for high performance and better service.2 In 2001, China announced that it had selected the 10 largest cities in the nation as “model cities” for ITS field testing and evaluation. Beijing, the 2008 Olympics host city, was at the top of the list. Beijing has an area of 16,807 square kilometers and a population of more than 13 million permanent residents and five million temporary and seasonal workers. The city roughly has two sections: the suburban rural counties and the central-city districts. Figure 2a shows the road network for the entire city; Figure 2b shows the section for the central-city districts. As Figure 2 shows, the road network for the central districts expands from six arterial loops, a traffic structure unique in the world. The first loop is a straight segment in the center stretching from east to west. The fifth and sixth loops (see Figure 2a), which connect the districts with the counties, are still under development. Traffic congestion and air pollution have been the two major problems facing Beijing for decades and are the two central concerns for the successful execution of the 2008 Olympics. Recently, Beijing’s government has made tremendous efforts toward solving those problems, and ITS technology will likely play an important role in the solutions.