Last year, Chinese drivers celebrated World Car Free Day with traffic jams around the country. For this year, authorities decided to do things a little differently: if you can’t persuade a large number of drivers to go car-free, then at least you can isolate certain city street to be free of cars. It’s a more humble goal, but still in keeping with the spirit of World Car Free Day.

CCTV America reports that 170 Chinese cities got involved on World Car Free Day this year with campaigns to promote environmental protection while certain cities like Chongqing imposed traffic controls. Specifically in Beijing, three areas were designated as car-free zones on Tuesday from 9am to 4pm: Wangfujing Boulevard, Nanluoguxiang, and Olympic Center Road.

Beijing drivers were advocated to make detours from these three car-free zones with signs saying “Traffic control, vehicle detour”. However, unlike preparations for the September 3 military parade in which martial law was imposed on the city’s popular Sanlitun area, these car-free zones were only a suggestion made to Beijing drivers and not enforced.

The result was that this year’s World Car Free Day turned out much like last year’s in China. As noted by a reporter for People’s Daily Online, there was no reduction in cars in Beijing’s three designated car-free zones with traffic said to be the same as normal (seen in the gallery above). Meanwhile, the Beijing Transportation Committee said the city’s traffic index during morning rush hour at 8:10am was 8, signifying heavy traffic.

And while much of the focus of World Car Free Day is help advocate drivers to lessen the impact that cars have on the environment, Beijing’s air quality was quite poor, averaging an AQI level over 150, much like conditions during Sunday’s marathon at which a number of heart attacks were reported.

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Alastair Morgan, courtesy of Google Images

Morgan, who owns three bicycles and makes the 30-minute commute from his home in Ersha Island to his office every day, told reporters that although the air quality is a concern: “I enjoy the whole process of a journey by bike.”

He wrote in his own blog that riding a bike was a way of avoiding becoming isolated from ordinary citizens.

Morgan also pointed out that the air quality in Guangzhou is not that bad compared to other Chinese cities, and on the route he took, he didn’t feel it was doing his body a great deal of harm. “London has also had its problems with congestion and air pollution. London managed to successfully combat these problems with strict policies such as congestion charges and subsidies for new energy vehicles,” said Morgan.

He also suggested that Guangzhou would benefit from encouraging cycling.

As well as cycling to commute, he also cycles to places such as the South China Botanical Garden on his days off, which he says has an “idyllic” feel.

According to Morgan’s biography on the U.K. government website:

Following six months of intensive training in Mandarin, Alastair served as the Commercial Counsellor and Director of Trade & Investment for China in British Embassy Beijing from March 2007 to December 2010.

Morgan is not the only foreign diplomat to have impressed locals by showing the common touch. According to Kotaku, U.S. Ambassador to China Gary Locke has won many admirers in China with his frugality.

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