China : Building institutions for sustainable urban transport

37181 EASTR WORKING PAPER NO.4 Transport Sector Unit, Infrastructure Department East Asia and Pacific Region January 2006 THE WORLD BANK Work in Progress For public discussion China: Building Institutions for Sustainable Urban Transport  China: Building Institutions for Sustainable Urban Transport First in a series of policy notes on Emerging Urban Transport Challenges: A Perspective EASTR WORKING PAPER NO.4 Transport Sector Unit, Infrastructure Department East Asia and Pacific Region January 2006  ACRONYMS ADB Asian Development Bank BRT Bus Rapid Transit CIP Capital Improvement Plan CNG Compressed Natural Gas FDI Foreign Direct Investment GDP Gross Domestic Product GEF Global Environment Facility GHG Green House Gas ICT Institute for Comprehensive Transportation JBIC Japan Bank for International Cooperation MOCn Ministry of Construction MTOE Million Tons Oil Equivalent SRA Strategic Rail Authority TFL Transport for London UTC Urban Transport Center UNHCS United Nations Center for Human Settlements  CHINA Building Institutions for Sustainable Urban Transport Abstract: Based on a number of background studies on the urban transport problems facing China's large cities, this report summarizes the diagnostic analyses of these problems with a focus on the associated institutional issues, and recommends policy directions and short- to medium-term institutional development actions for sustainable urban transport. In particular, it examines the changing nature of urban transport problems in a broad context of urbanization and fiscal decentralization, and calls for the national government to re-define and strengthen its role in dealing with the spillover effects of urban transport problems. The report is intended to contribute to the current debate on urban transport issues and to serve as a technical input to the government policy making process, especially at the national level. Acknowledgements: The report is prepared by the World Bank in collaboration with the China Academy of Urban Planning and Design (Urban Transport Center) and the Institute of Comprehensive Transport of the National Development and Reform Commission. The principal authors are Zhi Liu and Graham Smith of the World Bank. The report benefits from a much larger research effort managed by Edward Dotson, with contributions from Rakhi Basu, Shomik Mehndiratta, and Yan Zong (all World Bank); Lingbin Kong and Xiaojiang Li (China Academy of Urban Planning and Design); and Xiaobei Guo, Liya Liu, and Silin Zou (Institute of Comprehensive Transport). Ben Darche, Ken Gwilliam, Wei-shiuen Ng, and Lee Shipper prepared the background papers. Peer reviewers were Ken Gwilliam, Richard Scurfield, and Shahid Yusuf. Mats Andersson, Ke Fang, Remy Prud'homme, Mei Wang, and Jian Xie provided useful comments. Xin Chen and Xuan Peng provided able administrative assistance. The report was prepared under the general guidance of Jitendra Bajpai, David Dollar, and Bert Hofman.  2 I. The Urban Transport Problems: Dimensions and Trends China has 1. In its Eighth Five-Year Plan (1991-1995), the Government of China designated the succeeded in automotive industry as one of the pillar industries of the national economy. This was developing a world followed by the promulgation of an automotive industrial policy in 1994. The policy made class automotive it clear that the development of the automotive industry should rely on the domestic market industry within 10 for private cars. Within a decade, China has now become the world's fourth largest years... automobile producer and third largest consumer. Annual production capacity has reached five million automobiles. The number of registered cars increased exponentially from around one million in 1994 to five million in 2001, and to 16 million in 2004. The value- added from the auto manufacturing alone exceeded RMB 300 billion yuan (or US$37 billion equivalent) in 2004. Auto makers are getting ready to export China-built cars to Western markets. Obviously, the automotive industrial policy is a major success in driving the national economic growth and capturing the domestic market. Automobiles have 2. Automobiles also bring enormous benefits to the economy and users by enhancing enhanced mobility mobility. To a great extent, the rapidly growing demand for automobiles, especially private but they are also a cars, is a manifestation of the mobility benefits. However, associated with these benefits is a source of a range range of unprecedented problems that is causing serious concerns not only at the city level, of urban transport but also at the national and even international level (Figure 1). Most passenger cars are now problems... privately owned (over 65 percent) and are used in cities, especially the more affluent large cities of the coastal region. The city-level problems--traffic congestion, motor vehicle pollutions, and road trauma--emerged in only a few of the largest cities in the early 1990s, but are now common and serious in almost all large cities (Box 1). They are fast eroding the quality of urban life and the efficiency of urban economic activities. While these problems are not uncommon around the world, they seem to be growing out of proportion in most Chinese cities, where private car ownership is still at a relatively low level. GLOBAL Green House Gas Effect Energy Security / Fuel Prices NATIONAL Financial Liabilities Farmland Conversion Traffic Accidents LOCAL Auto Pollution Traffic Congestion Figure 1: The Urban Transport Problems in China  3 Box 1. Highlights of the Urban Transport Problems in China In Beijing, private cars increased from 0.17 million in 1996 to 1.4 million in 2004. Average peak-hour vehicle speeds on the arterial roads between the Second and the Third Ring Roads have declined from 45 km per hour in 1994, to 33 in 1995, 20 in 1996, 12 in 2003, and less than 10 in 2005. Congestion is spreading well beyond the Third and Fourth Ring Roads and along the major radial arterial roads. In Shanghai, private cars increased from 9,200 in 1996 to 250,000 in 2004. Vehicle speeds were recently found to be less than 20 km per hour on most of the 29 major roads and as low as 15 km per hour on nine of them. Peak-hour vehicle speeds on the city center roads ranged from 9 to 18 km per hour. In Shenzhen, traffic accidents have been the top killer over the past three years, according to a report from the city's medical emergency center. Forty percent of those killed in traffic accidents were aged 20 to 40. The State Environmental Protection Administration has estimated that the amount of carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons from auto emissions accounts for 79 percent of the total in urban areas nationwide in 2005. Sources: Finance and Economy (2004), Shanghai Metropolitan Transport Development Report (2004), Xinhua News Agency (2004), Shenzhen Daily (2005). 3. The rapid motorization allows little time for the municipal governments to prepare strategically effective responsive actions. As a result, they have been chasing demand for road space by investing heavily in road capacity. Few cities have drawn up a coherent urban transport strategy to manage the motorization process. Those with a strategy have not been able to stick closely to it due to lack of supporting institutions and policy environment. The approach adopted in most cities is thus piece-meal and ad hoc. Cities make way for car driving not only by building more roads and adding flyover highways along congested corridors, but also by dismantling existing bicycle rights-of-way, pedestrian sidewalks, and even rows of roadside trees. Meanwhile, many cities have also made significant road investment outside the city center areas and often in advance of demand. Most of the investment projects are associated with land development initiatives intended to attract foreign direct investment and have little relevance to the urgent need for alleviating congestion in the city centers, but they are clearly a key factor driving the urban sprawl. There are no clear 4. Despite rapid growth in private cars, the majority of urban households are car-less winners, and the and likely to remain so for the next 10-15 years. Their mobility needs have been seriously poor are suffering under-served by the established practice that commits much of the available resources to the most... meeting the demand for auto-mobility. In fact, they fall victim to the practice that makes way for car traffic at the cost of their once convenient and safe travel environment. In the largest cities and the metropolitan areas, the number of migrant workers has grown to 20 to 40 percent of the total population. Their transport needs receive little attention; few cities have analyzed travel patterns in the planning process. Ironically, the practice favoring cars also fails to satisfy the longer-term mobility needs of the car-owning population. The freedom of mobility enjoyed by them is short-lived and many motorists find themselves frequently sitting in gridlock during the peak hours. However, these problems do not seem to deter the growth of car ownership and use. The auto-dependent, low-density, suburban life-style is taking shape in a few major cities, but this is accompanied by an overall reduction of mobility quality for almost all income groups.  4 Public bus 5. Now that the national leadership places a new emphasis on people-centered transport is at a development, municipal governments will face increasing political and financial pressure to fragile point... improve mobility for all, especially for low-income people. The solution to the complex urban transport problems lies in the development of an efficient and affordable public transport system. This has long been recognized by policy makers and transport planners, and emphasized in every transport policy statement. But real actions have been far from adequate. Since the early 1990s, public transport has generally benefited from bus enterprise reform, increased investment in fleet capacity, and implementation of bus priority schemes, as well as urban population growth that helps maintain strong demand. Many cities have witnessed gains in both ridership and operating efficiency during the second half of the 1990s. These gains are now seriously threatened by the rapidly growing road congestion and the continuing shift to private cars. Most cities fail to guide transit-oriented land use development. The road network--instead of the public transport network--is commonly used in urban master plans as an instrument to shape the urban land use structure. Bus operations and the future guided mass transit systems are given little consideration in road design. The peri-urban land development is not planned in a way that would create a market for public transport. Few cities have taken concrete steps to reform the sector structure as a basis for the development of a viable industry. As a result, the sector remains financially fragile in most cities. The operating subsidies to Beijing's public bus company amount to RMB 0.8 to 1.0 billion a year (over $100 million), which accounts for 1.5 percent of the municipal budget revenues (Institute for Comprehensive Transportation --ICT, 2004). The situation in many other cities is even worse. Financial capacity 6. This is particularly alarming, as most cities will have to rely on bus transport for the to develop a rail- foreseeable future. Many cities aspire to a mass rail transit system, but only a few have the based mass transit financial capability in the short to medium term to develop such a system as the center piece system is limited in of their transport system. Currently, only Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Guangzhou, most cities... Changchun, Wuhan, Nanjing and Dalian have subways (rail based, mostly underground), with a total route length of 360 km. A few more cities are constructing their first metro lines. It is estimated that by 2010 a total of 1,600 km will be constructed nationwide, with a total investment of RMB 558 billion or US$69 billion equivalent (Urban Transport Center -- UTC, 2004a). Experience from all these cities shows that implementation of mass rail transit takes a long time and incurs high public debt. Shanghai's current three subway lines have a total fixed asset value of RMB 26 billion, of which RMB 16 billion are financed by debt (UTC, 2004a). Underground metros, which typically cost US$60-100 million per km to build, are successful only in the corridors with very high traffic density--typically 30- 40,000 passengers in one direction in the peak hour. `Success' in this case can be defined as `attracts enough riders to reduce above-ground traffic congestion perceptibly, without encumbering the city with operating deficits and debt service that may be unsustainable, comparing favorably with other options.' Most cities need to find alternatives to mass rail transit that can be implemented far more quickly, such as bus rapid transit (BRT)--the high end of which can carry almost as much traffic as a low-end rail-based metro but for a capital cost of only $5-10 million per km. This is also true for the mega-cities, where the rail-based system can be more viable in the longer term. International experience demonstrates that efficient and effective bus services are always a pre-requisite for an effective rail-based system. A major challenge for the Chinese cities now is how to develop an efficient bus transport system before the critical mass of motorists is formed and shapes an irreversible, auto-dependent land use pattern. 7. The urban transport problems in China are beginning to transcend the local dimension. A few issues associated with urban transport are causing increasingly serious concerns at the national level. The first is the threat to the efficiency of the urban  5 Spillover effects are economy. China's urban sector contributes 80 percent of the national GDP. The large cities threatening overall and metropolitan areas have been the engines of the economy and are expected to be so in sustainability while the future. Maintaining the efficiency of the urban economy--a key element in any travel mobility is sustainable economic growth strategy--will not only be in the interest of cities but also the declining... country as a whole. As international experience shows, traffic congestion reduces urban productivity through its impact on the effective size of the urban labor market, which can be measured as the number of people who can access jobs at a reasonable time and money cost. The larger the effective labor market, the better match of labor demand and supply, thus the greater the labor productivity (Prud'homme and Lee, 1999). 8. The second concern is the excessive conversion of agricultural land for urban development. Conversion of farmland is needed to accommodate urban population growth and the associated spatial expansion, where the development of transport infrastructure is an integral part of the process. However, it becomes excessive due to distorted incentives. Cities offer discounted or free land to attract foreign direct investment (FDI) and businesses on the one hand, and give land concessions for industrial and real estate development in return for financial gains on the other hand. The financial incentives arise mainly from the need to cover the gaps between municipal expenditures and revenues, but they distort the planned land use and transport structure, causing excessive conversion of farmland and under-utilization of urban land, and encouraging low-density suburban development that is far more costly to service with infrastructure. China is short of good farmland; its per capita arable land is only one third of the world average. Land conservation has long been a national policy, but it is inadequately enforced at the local level. 9. The third issue is financial liabilities (explicit and hidden) incurred by subnational governments for investment in urban expressways, ring roads, and subways. The primary funding sources--from the lease of land use rights and quasi-fiscal instruments such as borrowing by government-owned urban infrastructure investment companies with local government guarantees--are unlikely to be sustainable. The former is being exhausted, and the latter has incurred sizable contingent liabilities. 10. The fourth issue is energy security. The perceived crisis of long-term energy security, once remote, is becoming a real concern. China has become the second largest oil consumer, changing from an exporter of crude oil to an importer. One third of all fuels are imported. China has 21 percent of the world's population, but only three percent of its oil reserves and five percent of the world's oil production capacity (He et. al, 2005). Petroleum consumption by motor vehicles is still a small share of total consumption at less than 10 percent, but it is growing fast. The future of national energy security has to be seriously considered at a time when world oil prices are hovering above US$50 a barrel. The world is also concerned with the growth of petroleum demand from China and worries that it would drive up the world prices of fuels. 11. Finally, the growth of green house gas (GHG) emissions from the use of fossil fuels by automobiles is not only a national but also an international concern. As GHG emissions contribute to long-term global climate change, the international community is increasingly concerned with China's surging demand for oil consumption, which accounts for over 40 percent of the growth in world oil demand. While the magnitude of the GHG effect from China's motorization (relative to thermal power plants and other sources) is a subject for debate, increasing motorized travel in China will certainly contribute towards the growing GHG emissions. 12. It must be noted that despite the various problems discussed above, there are notable achievements. Over the last 10 years, almost all large cities have accorded a high priority to  6 While cities are dealing with traffic congestion. Significant capital investment has been made to expand the able to mobilize capacity of transport infrastructure, especially the street network. The amounts of resources resources for urban mobilized over a short period of time are unmatched by most developing cities around the transport, lack of world. The urban transport investment in Beijing, for instance, accounted for five percent of sustainability is at the municipality's GDP, a very high rate by world standards (ICT, 2004). Nationwide, the core of the traffic management has received greater emphasis. Modern traffic management techniques urban transport including bus priority schemes are increasingly being adopted. A few cities (e.g. Kunming, issues... Shijiazhuang, and Beijing) have started to develop, some with initial success, a bus rapid transit system. All major cities have established motor vehicle inspection and maintenance programs. While most cities have adopted Euro-II emission standards, a few are moving to Euro-III. All these demonstrate that the large cities are indeed capable of resource mobilization and action implementation. Most of them, however, fail to yield sustainable outcomes, and end up chasing the growing and emerging problems one by one. The central issue is lack of sustainability consideration in the planning and decision making processes. 13. Sustainability is about progress that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs (Brundtland Commission, 1987). No one would dispute that sustainability is critically important for the future of China, a country with a huge population, limited natural resources, and regional and income disparities. In 1994, the Government approved and published a landmark white paper on population, environment, and development. It set the sustainable development of population, resources, and environment as one of the national policies governing the formulation of the medium and long term economic and social development plans (including the Ninth and Tenth Five-Year Plans and Plan 2010) and the urban master plans. 14. International knowledge about sustainable urban transport is widely available. In Knowledge on 1995, shortly after the automotive industrial policy was promulgated, a joint study by the sustainable urban Chinese government, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank was completed on transport has not urban transport strategy for China. The study examined a wide range of interrelated issues, been effectively including motorization, auto pollution, urban transport management, bicycles, mass rapid translated into transit, public transit reform, the role of the private sector, transport pricing, and urban actions... transport planning (Stares and Liu, 1996). Sustainability was at the core of the issues examined. However, knowledge of this kind has not been effectively translated into actions. Opportunities exist for more proactive management of the motorization process and promotion of public transport, but these are mostly missed due to shortsightedness stemming from distorted institutional incentives. As will be discussed later, the lack of sustainability in China's urban transport development has much to do with the inadequacies of institutional capacity and incentives to translate good knowledge into effective actions. 15. The challenges ahead will be tremendous. The current practice, if continued, would All problems are result in fast exhaustion of fossil fuels, clean air, and valuable farmland and space, and the expected to widening of social inequality. By all indications, however, the economic forces are so increase with strong that continuing motorization is inevitable. The primary driving force behind motorization and motorization--the growth of household incomes--is expected to remain strong in urban urban growth China. The costs of owning a car do not seem to be a major factor to slow down the unless public policy process. In fact, prices of owning a car have been declining. A new automotive industrial begins to address policy was launched by the national government in 2004. The government will continue to them... promote the industry not only for domestic demand, but also for entering the global market on a larger scale by 2010. Due to intensifying market competition, the auto manufacturers are making every effort to keep prices low and make car loans more accessible to urban households. Since China's accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001, tariffs on imported automobiles have declined sharply from the previous 100 percent to close to the  7 2006 target of 25 percent. Even though imports account for less than 10 percent of new-car sales, this has put pressure on domestic manufacturers to lower their prices. It is estimated that car ownership will reach 170 million by 2020 under a business-as-usual scenario. As a consequence, the fuel consumption would reach 100 million tons oil equivalent (MTOE) from about 10 MTOE in 2005 and GHG emissions, 102 million tons, by 2020 (Shipper and Ng, 2004). 16. At the city level, private car ownership and use are determined not only by household incomes, but also city-specific factors such as land use patterns, traffic conditions, availability of alternative transport modes, and public policy interventions. Beijing and Shanghai are two mega-cities with comparable per capita incomes and population size, but Beijing has far more private cars than Shanghai. While the land use and transport conditions differ between the two cities, local policy interventions such as tight control of car ownership in Shanghai appear to have helped slow down the growth of private cars there. It is clear that the growth of private car ownership in cities will continue to be driven strongly by household income growth, but its pace could be guided by local public policies if desired by individual cities. 17. There are few predictions of car ownership at the city level for China. According to one forecast, urban car ownership for a typical large city by 2020 will be between 130 and 220 cars per 1,000 persons, depending on scenarios of income growth and urban population density (10,000 to 15,000 persons per square kilometer) (Stares and Liu, 1996, p. 50). This is equivalent to at least one car for every three urban households, assuming an average household size of 2.5 persons. As a comparison, the current level of car ownership in Beijing--a pacesetter in terms of motorization--is already near 100 cars per 1,000 persons. Obviously, for most other cities where the current car ownership is way below 50 cars per 1,000 persons, a growth of car ownership to the range of 130-220 per 1,000 persons in the next 15 years would pose an enormous challenge to the municipal governments. II. The Causes of Urban Transport Problems: A Diagnostic Analysis The urban transport problems 18. The urban transport problems facing China's large cities are in many ways similar to are associated with the experiences of most other countries. The Chinese experience is also unique, however. urbanization and Few countries have experienced the kind of extraordinarily rapid pace of motorization seen decentralization... in China. No other country has ever in history seen the shift of 300-400 million people from rural to urban life within just one generation. More importantly, the rapid motorization in China occurred during a crucial period of social transformation characterized by the strong dynamics of globalization, urbanization, fiscal decentralization, and the transition from central planning to a market-based economy. To a great extent, all these factors have shaped the urban transport problems and contributed to the success and failure of urban transport development. Urbanization is 19. China has been urbanizing rapidly over the last 10 years, and the growth of urban accompanied by population increases the total demand for urban transport services. The urban share of total rising incomes, population grew from 26.2 percent in 1990 to 36.1 percent in 2000 and almost 40 percent in transformation of 2005. This implies an increase of urban population of almost 250 million over the last 15 farms to firms, and years.1 The process is mainly driven by the rapid growth of urban manufacturing and structural changes service sectors, productivity increases in the rural sector releasing surplus labor, and the in living style and physical expansion of cities to the outlying rural areas, with on-site conversion of rural to urban land use... urban population. Recognizing that urbanization is the outcome of globalization and national economic growth, many municipal governments have quietly relaxed various policies previously designed to limit rural to urban migration. However, thanks to some of  8 these policies such as the hukou system, China has so far avoided the spontaneous creation of large shanty towns on the city outskirts that are common to almost every large city in Latin America, for example. 20. Across the country, the increase of urban population is more concentrated in the more affluent regions such as the southeastern coastal provinces. The big cities are growing bigger. Among China's 690 cities, some 40 have a population over one million and house a total of 200 million people, or 40 percent of the nation's city dwellers. In particular, three metropolitan areas are taking shape: the Pearl River Delta Region, the Lower Yangtze River Delta Region, and the Beijing-Tianjin-Tangshan Region. Altogether, with only one percent of the national land area, they contribute to roughly 40 percent of the national GDP and are integrating rapidly with the global economy (Figure 2) (Wang, 2004; UTC, 2005). In these metropolitan areas and other large cities, the rapid growth of the middle-income class, the aging of the residential population, and the influx of low-income young laborers pose an increasingly diversified range of demand for urban transport services in terms of quality, trip patterns, and affordability. Figure 2. The Role of the Three Metropolitan Areas Foreign Investment Import-Export Volumes Public Revenues Value of Industrial Production National GDP Retail Sales Population Urban Built-up Area Land Area 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 Share of National Total (%) 21. While the national population is steadily concentrating in urban areas especially the big cities, population within cities is suburbanizing. In Beijing, for example, the residential population declined in the four inner districts but increased substantially in the four outer districts over the period 1990-2000 (Figure 3, which is based on population census data). Other cities are undergoing similar structural changes in land use, with increasing job density in the city centers and declining gross population density city wide. During the last few years, the total built-up area of all Chinese cities has increased over 20 percent, faster than the urban population growth (Qiu, 2004). As a result, home-to-work trips are gradually getting longer and walking or biking is becoming less feasible. Other new trends are now emerging, for example, residential locations by income sorting, large-scale residential development in suburban areas for middle- and high-income groups, and the formation of large informal residential settlements for the floating population in the urban-rural fringe areas. All these changes increase the travel distances of most trips, especially the commuting, and create a new pattern of travel demand that is increasingly dependent on motorized transport.  9 Figure 3. Change of Population Distribution in Beijing 7 6 noita 5 pul 4 1990 po noilli 3 2000 2 m 1 0 Inner Districts Outer Districts Decentralization is 22. The last 10 years of rapid motorization coincide with the crucial period of China's changing the ways decentralization that devolves a range of functional and fiscal responsibilities from the of governance at national to subnational governments, especially the municipalities. This has a fundamental the local level, impact on the ways that the national and subnational governments manage urban particularly urban development. More importantly, the decentralization is an on-going process and a largely management and unfinished business. Many problems that emerged due to decentralization are yet to be modes of service fixed. For example, local governments are assigned expenditure responsibilities much more delivery... than their revenues could bear. These create incentives for local governments to raise funds through whatever ways are possible, only to meet the short-term needs. 23. As decentralization continues, governments at all levels are redefining their role and learning (by doing and through trial and error) how to play it more appropriately and effectively. Institutions, including their rules and procedures, are in the process of adjustment, readjustment and reform. Some of the urban transport problems discussed earlier occurred and persist due to a lag of institutional reform in response to the rapidly changing urban context. With the deepening of institutional reform and fine-tuning of decentralization, institutions will eventually evolve to become more effective to address most of the urban transport problems. The challenge is how to find ways to shorten the lag. Meeting this challenge is important, as the current problems are serious in magnitude and inaction or slow action for any period of time would be costly to the urban economy and society. Institutions have not kept pace with 24. Under the decentralized arrangement, the municipal governments take primary decentralization responsibilities--both functional and fiscal--for urban infrastructure, including urban and remain weak to transport. The responsibilities of the national government are limited to the review and address the approval of urban master plans and large urban transport investment projects (including spillover effects... mass rail transit), setting technical standards and policy guidance, promoting knowledge exchange, and facilitating capacity building. However, the increasingly rapid economic and spatial changes at the local level make it increasingly difficult for the national government to review and approve the urban master plans and investment projects. For example, the approval process for an urban master plan is supposed to take approximately half a year (ICT, 2005), but in most cases, it actually has taken more than two years. One case took seven years. The effectiveness of the national government in carrying out these responsibilities is seriously compromised by the limited national budget available for urban  10 transport. Central monitoring and supervision is limited at the local level where planning and policy implementation is carried out. To some extent, this situation creates an institutional void in addressing the spillover effects of urban transport problems. The presence and growth of the spillover effects, as discussed earlier, justifies a reconsideration of the role of the national government in urban transport. Inadequacies in 25. At the local level, most large cities are able to make decisions and implement them. urban institutions But do they have the right incentives to make strategic decisions that do not compromise the and their policy long-term interests of the cities and the nation? Is the urban planning practice adequate for making are rapid urbanization and motorization? Are there adequate checks and balances that would affecting the make sure a good strategic plan gets implemented? Are the financial means adequate and efficiency of cities sustainable? Our diagnostic analysis below suggests that the inadequacies of four and their travel mechanisms--incentives, planning, checks and balances, and financing--are the main conditions... reasons that prevent the translation of good knowledge into actions and hampers the development and adoption of a sustainable urban transport strategy, with a consequent declining quality of urban mobility and travel conditions across almost all major cities. 26. The incentive mechanism. Due to the transitional nature of decentralization, the municipal governments face a number of unprecedented management problems. The mayors are held accountable not only for the provision of urban public services, but also for the performance of the urban economy including, among other things, reforming the state- owned enterprises, running (indirectly as the majority share holder) the local financial intermediaries such as the urban commercial bank, and seeking business investment from outside. They all face tough choices between rapid GDP growth and more balanced, sustainable development. The central and provincial budget support is shrinking, the local revenue base is at an early stage of development, and cities compete ever more fiercely for FDI through infrastructure improvement. When the incentive is strong for a city to rapidly improve the transport infrastructure conditions in order to attract FDI and employment, the sustainability consideration and other long-term interests of the residents are at the risk of being compromised. For many years until very recently, the performance of mayors has been rated by the annual urban GDP growth. The single-minded pursuit of GDP growth has unintentionally caused substantial damage to the environmental and social sustainability. The excessive conversion of farmland that contributes to a non-transit friendly urban sprawl is a case in point. Fortunately, this is beginning to change, thanks to the green-GDP and people-centered development concepts recently promoted by the national government.2 However, a great deal of effort is needed to operationalize these concepts. 27. The urban planning mechanism. The urban planning process is supposed to provide a blueprint for sustainable urban transport development. However, it has its own weaknesses. A challenge facing most large cities in China is how to overcome the inherent rigidity of the urban master plan to provide necessary flexibility required for meeting the rapidly growing demand for urban services. Currently, the process produces a 20-year urban master plan, a short-term implementation plan, and a number of associated sectoral master and implementation plans for a planning area defined by jurisdiction. As illustrated by the case of Guangzhou (Box 2), urbanization has grown so rapidly in many cities that actual urban population exceeds in just a few years the planned population target for the entire time horizon of the master plan (i.e. 20 years), and the actual urban functional area expands beyond jurisdiction boundaries. At present, there are no effective cross-jurisdiction coordination mechanisms (UTC, 2005b). The only effective way to handle the problem so far is adjustment of municipal jurisdiction boundaries, such as the case in Guangzhou. But this has often come years after the problem occurred.  11 Box 2. The Problems and Evolution of Guangzhou's Urban Planning System The 14th Urban Master Plan of Guangzhou Municipality was approved by the State Council in 1984, three years after its completion. By 1989 the spatial expansion of the city had already exceeded the limit set by the Plan for 2000. It was then decided to start the 15th urban master planning process. It took a few years to complete, and was submitted to the State Council for approval in 1996. However, the Plan had not been approved until 2003. This extraordinarily time-consuming process was mainly due to the increasing difficulties in sectoral and jurisdictional coordination and a number of previously unexpected changes that would fundamentally affect the direction of urban development. For example, the conversion of two neighboring municipalities into municipal districts of Guangzhou, which was sanctioned by the Provincial Government in 2000, opened up new opportunities for Guangzhou to reshape its land use structure in line with the development of the actual urban functional area. The emergence of land use proposals for large-scale logistics centers, IT centers, a university city and the like also forced planners to revisit the draft urban master plan again and again. Source: Dai and Duan (2003). 28. It is now recognized that a strategic planning process (also known as conceptual planning) is needed to look into the longer term (30-50 years) socio-economic and spatial development possibilities of a potential urban functional area, not necessarily a jurisdiction area (Qiu, 2005). Guangzhou has adopted this approach, putting the future development in a much broader context of globalization, regional integration, and ecological preservation (Li, et al. 2002). The strategic plan has allowed a higher level of flexibility by focusing on spatial structure and cluster development instead of the specific use of every land parcel, thus helping alleviate the rigidity problem of the urban master plan. A main constraint for most other cities is lack of technical capacity and practical experience in strategic planning. 29. Another weakness of the current urban planning process is that planning is still very much an art of the technocracy (Qiu, 2005). Public participation and monitoring in the planning process is still at the early stage of experiment. While professional technical competence is needed for the planning practice, it is not sufficient. Effective and meaningful public participation and monitoring is an essential element to protect the long- term interest of the city and the interests of disadvantaged groups. This is especially important at the time of rapid growth that often requires modification of the master plan. Due to the lack of it, there are numerous incidents where planners have to modify the master plan in a manner that compromises the long-term interest to accommodate the short-term initiatives. This is somewhat related to the weak enforceability of the master plans. An urban master plan, once approved by the higher authority, becomes a law enforceable by the local People's Congress. However, the associated detailed implementation plan and sectoral plans (such as city street network plan) are not required to be approved by the higher authority. This creates opportunities for some cities to push for the implementation of investment projects that are not consistent with the urban master plan (ICT, 2005). This also explains how some cities are able to build image projects excessively, crowding out the financial resources that could be used more efficiently for meeting the urgent need for transport infrastructure services. 30. The most serious weakness is perhaps the de-linkage between the urban master plan and the city's expected budget. The linkage between planning and financing, if any, is further weakened by the lack of sustainable financing mechanisms for urban infrastructure. The urban master planning process in most cities often presumes essentially  12 unconstrained demand for urban infrastructure improvements required for city build-out. There is no financial feasibility analysis or "hard budget constraint" analysis on the supply of capital for plan implementation.3 Urban infrastructure improvements foreseen in the urban master plan are implemented on an ad-hoc basis as and when funding is secured for specific projects.4 Few cities have included a Capital Improvement Plan--a common practice in many other countries--in the planning process. This greatly reduces the realism of urban planning, and often makes it difficult to implement. 31. This ad-hoc case-by-case process is impacted by several constraints in the funding environment. The nested hierarchical system of public finance in China makes it difficult for lower-level local governments to plan multi-year operating and capital expenditures. Higher-level governments, such as the provinces, have the authority to change the rules regarding the allocation of revenues to lower-level government units, even though these governments must follow the general principles established by the Ministry of Finance regarding revenue assignments. Allocation formulae can shift from year to year, making it difficult to plan investments and operating expenses more than one year at a time and certainly over the life of a loan. Unless this process changes, it will be difficult to develop a "hard budget constraint" that insures fiscally sustainable cities. 32. The checks and balances mechanism. Mechanisms are needed to ensure that an appropriate procedure is in place for municipal decisions to take into consideration the interests of the majority of the urban residents. The urban planning and implementation process in China is kept in checks by the higher level authority and the local People's Congress. In recent years, the process is also gradually open up for monitoring by the mass media and the general public. However, the mechanism remains largely incomplete. It is generally reactive to problems that occur in the planning implementation stage, instead of more active in the early stage of the planning process. This arises from the lack of clarity on the roles, responsibilities and accountability of all parties involved in the process, and lack of due procedure for resolution when concerns or disputes occur. There is no adequate and clear accountability system in place to hold decision makers responsible for the social and environment consequences of their decisions. While public consultation is adopted by many cities, it is sometimes manipulated by the planning authorities. The rapidly growing demand for urban services also creates a sense of urgency for the municipal governments to make decisions and take action speedily. This is often accomplished through bypassing the constraint of the urban master plan. The results are mixed--some succeed in overcoming the rigidity of the master plan while others meet the short-term needs at the heavy cost of long-term interest. Much remains to be done in improving the checks and balances mechanism to ensure sensible decisions are made on a broadly informed, transparent basis. 33. The municipal financing mechanism. The cost of providing urban transport infrastructure to carry the growing traffic is high. At the same time as the explosive urban growth has increased demand for urban transport services, decentralization has shifted much of the responsibility for providing these services to local governments, who are faced with the burden of increased expenditures without the power to raise revenues on the scale needed. In 1994 China adopted a tax reform and introduced a Tax Sharing System, where the central government and subnational governments had separate tax-collection powers over certain categories of taxes. However, due to the asymmetry between fiscal power and expenditure assignment, the ratio of subnational revenues to the total revenues has averaged around 50 percent, while the ratio of local fiscal expenditure to the total remained high at about 70 percent. The gap has been filled mainly through off-budget funds, which include borrowing through municipal government-owned infrastructure investment companies, municipality-imposed surcharges, donations by beneficiaries, and land concessions. These  13 off-budget funds help bridge the gap between the limited municipal budgetary revenues and the growing expenditures, and are critical to financing urban transport infrastructure (Peterson, 2004). Cities spend, on average, 45 percent of their urban infrastructure budget on new roads. But this is only a fraction of the total capital spent on roads. The balance is made up mainly by the off-budget funds. 34. There are various problems with off-budget funds. Lack of transparency and the resultant hidden financial liabilities are a major concern to the national government. From the perspective of urban transport financing, relying on off-budget funds is not a sustainable practice. Land concessions, for example, are a major source of off-budget revenues for urban transport, but they are not a sustainable source of revenues. In the current practice, the urban land price is determined by market perceptions (sometimes inflated) of its value in future urban use, whereas compensation to the farmer is determined as the present value of a few years' crops grown on it. This big gap creates strong financial incentives for local governments to acquire farmland for land concessions, often more than necessary. New and more stable sources of local revenues are needed. Property taxes, betterment charges, and municipal borrowing--important sources of funding for infrastructure in many developed cities--are either at the early stage of development or not permitted by law. The political 35. The institutional weaknesses--namely the institutional void between the national and context is shifting municipal levels and the inadequacies of incentives, planning, checks and balances, and in favor of financing mechanisms--have been recognized for some time, but have not been institutional reform systematically addressed through policy and institutional reforms. An opportunity has just for sustainable emerged. After a decade-long pursuit of rapid GDP growth, there is now a much stronger urban transport... recognition at the national and municipal levels of the sustainability element of the growth agenda. In response, the current leadership is promoting the green-GDP concept and is placing a new emphasis on people-centered development. 36. This shift in policy emphasis is also starting to influence the urban transport agenda. It is becoming clearer to the Chinese government that road expansion alone is not an adequate answer to motorization and traffic congestion. There is an unprecedented interest at different levels of government in issues related to public transport and the adequacy of planning and financing mechanisms. There are signs of recognition for a stronger role of the national government in urban transport. Serious attention has been given to public transport by the top government leaders. The Ministry of Construction (MOCn) issued guidelines on public transport development in April 2004. In May 2004, Premier Wen Jiabao made it clear that "giving priority to urban public transport development is a correct line of strategic thinking that suits the reality of China's urban and transport development." On September 23, 2005, the State Council issued a document (No. 46 in the year 2005 series) endorsing an opinion by the MoCn on priority development of urban public transport. The debate on urban transport policy is increasingly covered by the mass media. With increasing recognition of the energy and environmental problems (including loss of agricultural land) associated with rapid urban motorization, the national government is considering the amendment of a Land Administration Law and the drafting of a Land Planning Law as a means to clean up the excessive land development at the local level. After 10 years of practically staying away from urban transport matters, the national government clearly sees that it still has a crucial role to play. The question is how to define the role appropriately and how to play it effectively. 37. Political trends also appear to be favorable for institutional reform for sustainable urban transport. Chinese society is becoming increasingly open. Civil organizations for environment and the disadvantaged are developing and increasingly influencing public opinion. Mass media, particularly the internet, are becoming a rather healthy critic of local  14 government policies and practices. The internet often picks up the problems which the national government policy monitoring mechanisms fail to pick up. The government, techno-bureaucracies, and civil society are all calling for more openness and accountability in the planning and decision making process. III. Priority Actions for Institutional Development Technological 38. As the above diagnostic analysis indicates, China's large cities are generally able to solutions exist but mobilize resources to build and maintain urban transport infrastructure, but the emerging strong institutions complexities of the urban economy and related demand for travel mobility require forward matter the most... looking institutions which are adaptive to changes and capable of managing a sustainability agenda for their cities. At this stage of rapid development and social transformation, institutions matter the most. This note proposes some strategic directions and short- to medium-term priority actions for developing effective institutions to promote sustainable urban transport. 39. The strategic directions should be linked with the expected outcomes. A major dilemma facing the national government is the apparent conflict between the automotive industrial policy and the sustainability concerns. Is there a win/win strategy? The answer is yes, according to recent analyses. One study estimated the levels of fuel consumption and GHG emissions under three hypothetical scenarios defined below (Shipper and Ng, 2004; Ng and Shipper, 2005):