However, when it comes to Beijing traffic, back to “normal” generally means back to gridlock. And that’s precisely what the Beijing Municipal Commission of Transport (BMCT) is warning residents to expect today following heavy congestion across the city yesterday.

Yesterday marked the first day back at work after the holiday, as well as the first day without vehicle restrictions. And as one might expect, traffic was insane.  The BMCT predicted that yesterday’s congestion reached a 9.2 on the index, which means that the average speed on many city roads didn’t exceed 20 kph.

With today marking the first day of school for Beijing elementary and middle school students, the congestion is only expected to get worse.

This past spring, among a list of 45 cities across China, Beijing ranked as the most congested. While in July, the Beijing Transportation Research Center found Beijing’s traffic index to have worsened 32 percent as compared with the same month last year.

On average, Beijing commuters spend 32 minutes every day sitting in rush hour traffic.

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The entirety of Tiananmen Square and the pedestrian commercial street Wangfujing will be completely closed this coming weekend to accommodate parade rehearsals, following the closure of the Sanlitun area this past weekend. A number of tourist attractions are also closed until the parade is over, including the Forbidden City and the Chairman Mao Memorial Hall.

“The parade will mainly affect scenic spots, including the Palace Museum, National Museum of China, the Chairman Mao Memorial Hall, the Tian’anmen Rostrum and the National Center for the Performing Arts,” said Xu Xiaolei, a publicity officer for a Chinese travel service provider.

Seven Beijing parks will be closed during the rehearsals and the parade, including Chaoyang Park, Longtan Park, Honglingjin Park, Lotus Pond Park, Yaowahu Park, Taoranting Park and Yuyuantan Park. The nearby Qianmen commercial street will face entry restrictions on September 2 and 3.

Broadcast radio and wireless Internet signals will be banned in neighborhoods located around Tiananmen Square from midnight to noon on September 3, while amateur radio stations, campus broadcasting stations, and the use of radio-controlled planes have been banned throughout the city. Some 850,000 Beijing residents will be given public security responsibilities from August 22 until September 3 to assist in the preparations, said the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau.

Preparatory measures haven’t been limited to Beijing. In Shanghai, trains bound for Beijing will be guarded around the clock. As railway police officer Zeng Ji’an explained, “This is a temporary measure to prevent undesirables from trying to smuggle dangerous items onto the trains that serve Beijing.”

The military parade has affected a number of services and areas of Beijing, including shutting down the city’s airports, subway stations, restricting car use, and placing stricter security protocols on all mail and deliveries entering the city. At the same time, thousands of factories and power plants in Beijing and its six surrounding provinces will be shuttered in an effort to improve local air quality in time for the parade.

The military parade will commemorate the 70th anniversary of the victory in the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, known in the rest of the world as World War II. It is being held on China’s newest holiday this year on September 3 which will serve as the beginning of a three-day holiday for Chinese workers.

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Seven provinces including Hebei, Tianjin, Shanxi, Inner Mongolia, Shandong and Henan as well as the municipality of Beijing will implement temporary controls on local industries, power plants and construction between August 28 and September 4.

Deputy mayor of Beijing Gong Zhang said more than 10,000 factories will be shut down or have their production staggered. As well, a number of coal-fired power plants will be shut down for maintenance, while construction at nearly 9,000 sites will be halted.

Meanwhile, vehicle use in the capital will be severely restricted by a quota system between August 20 and September 3, during which some 80 percent of all government cars will be taken off the roads.

According to Zhang, the efforts will help reduce emissions of major air pollutants by 40 percent in Beijing and 30 percent in other regions. Environment Minister Chen Jining has said clean air is integral to the success of the parade and to serve as a showcase for the capital.

The temporary measures come at a time when Beijing has changed from having some of the best air in China to having some of the worst. According to the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP), Beijing ranked as one of the top ten worst Chinese cities with polluted air this past July when 65 percent of the month was considered to be “polluted”.

At the same time, most of the other cities in the top ten  are among the areas that will implement the temporary measures. Xingtai, Tangshan, Baoding, Handan, Hengshui and Langfang are near Beijing in Hebei Province, while other top polluted cities include Jinnan, Shandong and Zhengzhou, Henan.

September 3 is a national holiday this year so China can commemorate the 70th Anniversary of the end of World War II. A military parade will go through Tiananmen Square.

Other measures implemented to ensure the smooth facilitation of the military parade include the closure of Beijing Airport and the Beijing Metro on September 3rd as well as putting all mail and packages sent to the capital through tight security protocols.

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Beijing residents are being warned about a number of inconveniences as China gets ready to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression with a military parade held on September 3, China’s newest holiday.

We’ve already told you how the city is already planning to shut down Beijing International Airport as well as Nanyuan Airport in the south of the city, but the changes don’t stop there. Car restrictions will be enforced on Beijing roads in the 15 days leading up to the event. From August 20 until September 3, a single-odd license plate quota system will limit half of all Beijing cars from hitting the streets on a daily basis.

The single-odd licence plate restrictions were enforced previously ahead of major international events in order to improve the city’s poor air quality, such as during last year’s APEC summit, the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and presumably for the future 2022 Beijing Olympics.

But that’s not the only disruption to Beijing’s transportation system. Beijing will close subway stations and limit service to various public transportation lines during the September 3 morning parade, but will only disclose details five days in advance.

Meanwhile, Beijingers are also prohibited from buying their own aircraft until August 21. Furthermore, private and commercial use of aircraft in the skies above the Chinese capital will be banned from August 22 until September 4.

Tiananmen Square stopped accepting visitors at the beginning of this month and will be off-limits to the public until September 7. As well, the road along Chang’an Avenue is said to be “explosion-proof” after upgrades were made to the road in July.

Although China misses out on getting a holiday this year for Mid-Autumn Festival, workers will get the day off from work on September 3 to celebrate the “victory over fascism”, leading to a mini-holiday on September 3, 4, and 5. As a result, September 6, a Sunday, is designated a regular work day in China this year.

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Under the new system, a red alert will be issued when the air quality index (AQI) is forecast to exceed 300 at more than half of the city’s 10 monitoring stations. Cars in the city will be allowed on the road only on alternate days during red alerts, according to the rules approved on Monday. Orange alerts will be issued when air quality index falls between 201 to 300. If an orange alert is issued, businesses that fail to meet emissions standards will be required to cease emissions altogether.

Thirty percent of government cars will remain parked if air pollution hits serious levels. Twenty percent will be kept off the road during orange alerts.

The mayor himself has pledged to change his commuting habits to help the environment.

The paper has more:

Construction sites that put dust and fumes in the air, as well as fireworks and outdoor barbecues will be banned during orange alerts.

The government’s fleet of 13,000 cars accounts for about 0.6 percent of the cars in Guangzhou, Yang Liu, director of the city’s environmental protection bureau, said at a news conference on Monday.

“In difficult times, public servants should take the lead in taking action to address environmental pollution.”

Yang said Guangzhou Mayor Chen Jianhua pledged to go to work by subway during any environmental emergencies.

Asked whether schools would be suspended during a red alert, Yang said education authorities would address that issue.

In the past three years, the city’s air quality has never deteriorated to a level that would today prompt a red alert, Yang said.

An orange alert would have been issued twice in 2011 and three times last year. No orange alert would have been warranted so far this year.

Guangzhou’s air quality complied with the standard on 210 of the 274 days in the first three quarters of this year, according to Yang’s bureau.

Excellent air quality was recorded on 73 days, good air quality on 137 days, light pollution on 55 days and medium pollution on eight days.

Readings that failed the standards mainly involved ozone, nitrogen dioxide and PM2.5 — particulate matter smaller than 2.5 micrometers in diameter.

Of the six air pollution indexes, the PM2.5 reading failed the standard by the largest margin, averaging 47 micrograms per cubic meter and exceeding the standard by 34 percent in the three quarters.

Guangzhou’s PM2.5 readings will decrease by more than 6 percent in 2015 compared with the 2010 levels, according to the city’s environmental protection plan.

Although there is reason to be skeptical as to whether the measures will be successful, their introduction shows that the issue of air pollution has truly taken centre stage. Long-term China watcher Isabel Hilton had this to say:

There was a time, maybe ten years ago, when people were almost proud of smog because it meant ‘we’re industrializing, we’re becoming a real country, we have the problems of modernity rather than the problems of the middle ages.’ So this was regarded as progress….that moment has definitely passed, and these very serious episodes have brought terrific pressure on the government. If you are the only power, you also are the only people to blame, and they know that.

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