Society

People living in historic hutong areas are furious about a plan to ban parking in their neighborhoods.

The residents want to continue to park outside their courtyard homes, instead of parking vehicles - as the plan demands - in parking lots outside the hutong areas.

The district authority in Dongcheng recently shared its draft plan, which calls for parking lots to be built for the 60,000 vehicles currently being parked in 500 hutongs each night. The local government says the large number of vehicles in the narrow streets causes congestion in the 17 historic areas in Dongcheng district.

"With the number of vehicles in Beijing passing four million last month, the municipal government has called on each district to provide more traffic facilities to support the fast growth," said a senior official surnamed Yang with the static state traffic department in Dongcheng district government.

Yang said hutongs, many of which were built hundreds of years ago, were never meant to cope with cars but are currently choked with parked vehicles.

"It makes the narrow paths in the hutong area more crowded and fire vehicles are not able to drive through if there is a fire," he said.

Ten months after buying a new bike, Wang Zhi gave up and put his gleaming ride up for sale.

"I might get hit cycling on the crowded roads if I keep it," the 24-year-old housing agent said as he put his 260-yuan bike up for auction on Monday.

"No roads in Beijing seem to have been built for cyclists."

In the decades since the heyday of the bicycle, the capital's streets have become increasingly choked with vehicles.

Now, in an effort to get people back in the saddle again, the local government has begun an ambitious plan to return byways to eco-friendly cycle routes.

The plan was outlined in a directive on Jan 1 from the municipal reform and development commission, which supervises the city's industries.

The plan calls for better law enforcement to make sure designated bike lanes are only used by cyclists. Bike rental facilities will also be resurrected, with at least 500 stations set to be run by a private enterprise by next year, according to the directive.

A second airport in Beijing is expected to start construction within this year to ease the traffic pressure on the capital airport, a senior official said.

The Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) has chosen to build the new airport in Daxing District, southern Beijing, Wang Changshun, deputy head of CAAC, told METRO at the sidelines of an annual working conference Wednesday.

The plan now awaits a final nod from the State Council, China's cabinet, he added.

The administration has already listed the project among 25 important airport projects that will be carried out this year.

Earlier reports said the second capital airport is scheduled to open in 2015 to ease the traffic pressure on the Beijing International Capital Airport.

As the capital airport handled 65 million passengers last year, ranking fourth in the world in the term of passenger throughput, "only some three years' are left before the passenger flow hits maximum capacity", Dong Zhiyi, the airport's general manager, said.

For 75-year-old American physicist Yuen-Ron Shen, life has been a series of plane rides between his American laboratory in Berkeley and China.

"I used to help many Chinese researchers in the field of science and technology seek work or study opportunities in America in the 80s," he told China Daily yesterday in Beijing.

"But increasing numbers of overseas Chinese have begun to consult me about how to work in China," he said.

He was in Beijing for the presentation ceremony to receive the 2009 International Science and Technology Cooperation Award yesterday.

The award is conferred on foreigners or foreign organizations that have made important contributions to China's science and technological undertaking and development.