Beijing Olympics 2008

Qingdao City in east China is “full of confidence” in hosting a successful sailing competition of the 29th Olympic Games in August, Mayor Xia Geng said Sunday.
The seaside city in Shandong Province has prepared first-class venues, tight security measures, and rapid and convenient transport for the Aug. 9-23 event, the mayor said.
Xia also dismissed worries about food safety.
“We have launched a special project to ensure Olympic food safety since 2004,” he said, speaking on the sidelines of the annual session of the National People’s Congress (NPC), China’s parliament.
“No problem has been found about food safety during two Olympic test events held here in 2006 and 2007,” he said.
Qingdao, with clean air and beautiful scenery, is expected to attract 200,000 visitors when the sailing event is held.

from: xinhuanet.com 

Traffic ban shall be imposed during the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, with the vehicles affected compensated by the government, said Ji Lin, vice mayor of Beijing on Friday.
“Automobiles, excluding taxis, buses and emergency vehicles, are to stay off roads every other day in accordance with the even and odd numbers on the license plates,” said Ji, a deputy to the 11th National People’s Congress, China’s top legislature.
“The ban is aimed to ensure air quality during the sport events in Beijing,” he said.
Drivers whose vehicles are stopped according to the rule will get compensation, Ji noted, adding that the compensation plan is being drafted and the amount is yet to be published.
Some vehicles belonging to government departments and state-owned enterprises are to be sealed, said the official.
To facilitate people’s travel, some buses will have their operation time prolonged or even run around the clock, while intervals between subway trains are to be shortened, he said.
Beijing tested a traffic ban from August 17 to 20 last year, removing 1.3 million or one third of automobiles from its gridlocked streets, which, according to an earlier report, reduced exhaust emissions by 40 percent each day.
The air quality seemed improved during the four-day trial, with the pollution index standing between 93 and 95, down from 116 on the day prior to the test.
During the Beijing Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation from November 1 to 5, 2006, half of the vehicles from central government departments and army vehicles and 80 percent of the automobiles from the Beijing municipal government departments and the provincial bureaus located in the capital were ordered to stay off the roads. The move was also seen as a pre-Olympics rehearsal.
Beijing is going all out to clear its sky and remedy its clogging traffic for the Olympic Games this coming August, with boosting public traffic a major resort. The city slashed prices of public traffic and opened 27.6-km subway lines last year.
“Keeping public traffic at low price is not a makeshift, but a long-term policy to encourage more citizens to leave behind their cars,” said Ji.
The vice mayor also told Xinhua that Beijing would extend its rails to 561 km by 2015.

from: chinadaily.com.cn

Athletes and high-ranking Olympic officials being whisked to venues this summer will get there with the help of satellite navigation devices and some aid from the military.
Yu Chunquan, director of transportation for the local organizing committee, said Tuesday that an “unprecedented 8,000 volunteers” would drive many of the vehicles that will speed through Beijing’s usually clogged streets using specially designated “Olympic lanes.”
He said 2,000 additional “professional drivers” would chauffeur buses and other vehicles under contract to local companies.
Yu said many of the 7,000 vehicles designated for official Olympic use would have satellite navigation systems, preventing drivers from getting lost.
Yu acknowledged some of the “volunteer drivers” would come from the military, a move aimed at covering any security risk for the highly publicized games.
“We know during the games that people in the Public Security Bureau will be very busy,” Yu said. “So to my knowledge, no policemen have applied for this position. Yes, some soldiers applied to be drivers. They are volunteers. In the past Olympics, there have been some military men providing service.”
Yu said the overall traffic plans for the Olympics would not be completed until the end of April. Officials are expected to ban half of Beijing’s vehicles - that number will reach 3.3 million this summer - shutter factories and halt construction in the weeks leading up the August 8-24 games.
Last August, in a four-day test, officials removed 1.3 million private vehicles daily using a plan under which even- and odd-numbered license plates were ordered off the roads on alternate days. Officials said the plan was successful despite haze and gray skies during the four-day drill.

from: chinadaily.com.cn

Beijing opened a huge new $3.6 billion, Norman Foster designed airport terminal on Friday ahead of the expected influx of millions more visitors coming to this summer’s Olympic Games.
The impressive new terminal’s nearly 3-km (2-mile) long concourse, which is divided into three sections and connected by a shuttle train, will boost capacity at the airport to 76 million compared with the 52 million who used the airport last year.
Six airlines will use Terminal 3 initially, including Sichuan Airlines, Shandong Airlines, Qatar Airways, Qantas Airways , British Airways and El Al Israel Airlines.
More will move in from March 26, including Air China, Lufthansa , Singapore Airlines and other Star Alliance members, as well as Emirates and Air Canada.
The terminal is designed to look like a dragon, complete with triangular windows cut into the ceiling as though they were scales.
A train will zip people downtown in just under a quarter of an hour and the high-tech baggage system will handle 19,800 bags per hour.
The terminal also has special bridges to handle Airbus’s giant double-decked A380.
It has almost double the number of boarding gates of the old terminals and nearly 300 check-in desks. The terminal has been build to maximize the use of natural light, with walls of glass.

from: chinadaily.com.cn 

Workers have completed laying the tracks for intercity high-speed railway between Beijing and Tianjin on Sunday morning, the first of its kind in China.
The 200-km rail, starts from the Beijing South Railway Station in the downtown area and ends at Tianjin Railway Station, passing through the districts of Yizhuang Industrial Park, Yongle New Town and and Tianjin’s Yangcun, said a spokesman of the railway project.
Designed for a full speed of 350 kilometers per hour, the railway will shorten the journey between the two cities from the current 70 minutes to around 30 minutes.
A maximum of 20 pairs of trains will run on the new rail route per hour. Starting at an interval of 3 minutes, the trains are expected to carry up to 18,000 passengers per hour. At a cost of more than 13.3 billion yuan (about 1.8 billion U.S. dollars), the project started in July 4, 2005 and will be operational before the Beijing Olympic Games in next August.
According to the blueprint of the Ministry of Railway, intercity high-speed railway network will be set up in the economic developed areas, including the Yangtze River Delta, the Bohai Sea Ring area and the Pearl River Delta, by 2020.

Photo taken on Dec. 15, 2007 shows a segment of the Beijing-Tianjin intercity high-speed railway in downtown Tianjin, north China. Workers completed the laying of track for the intercity high-speed railway between Beijing, China’s capital, and the neighboring coastal city of Tianjin, the first of its kind in China, on Dec. 16, 2007. (Xinhua Photo)

 from: beijing2008.cn

The Beijing -Tianjin passenger railway yesterday completed laying its tracks, making it possible for the high-speed train to open as scheduled for the 2008 Summer Olympics.
The 120 km-long railway is the first in the mainland to have trains that reach 300kmh and will shorten travel between the two cities from about an hour to 30 minutes, with a minimum interval between trains of three minutes, officials have said.
Construction of the railway’s signal, telecommunication and electrical supply systems are next in line, after which fast-speed trains will conduct test runs starting from February.
The railway is scheduled to begin operations on August 1, a week before Olympic Games.
There will be five stations along the rail line - Beijing Southern Railway Station, Yizhuang in southeastern Beijing, Yongle and Wuqing in Tianjin, and Tianjin Railway Station.
Its operation will enable more passengers to travel between Beijing and Tianjin, and help speed up the integration of the regional economies of the two major cities of North China.
The Ministry of Railways has said in its mid- and long-term plan that a fast passenger transport rail network will be formed by the year 2020 to link up China’s major cities and cities in three regions.
“The completion of laying rail tracks on the Beijing-Tianjin high-speed railway signifies a breakthrough in high-speed railway construction technology that China has mastered,” said Liu Zhijun, minister of Railways.
The ministry said that many new technologies were used in the project for the first time in China’s railway building history, which together enhances the railway’s life span and produces low levels of pollution and noise. Up to 86 percent of the railway is built on bridges.
The Beijing-Tianjin railway has been exemplary for other high-speed railway projects under construction, Liu said.