The rapid urbanization in China over the past few decades has led to ballooning demand for mobility. Rising incomes and falling automobile prices have released a wave of mass motorization, producing severe traffic congestion and air pollution in many major metropolitan areas, creating the urgent need for better mobility management.
At JTL, we evaluate how transportation systems can be made more sustainable and efficient in China. Indeed, we have identified that the overall growth of automobiles in China conceals significant variation among its cities. Crucial differences in the timing and structure of these cities’ transportation policies have influenced their effectiveness, efficiency, and equity. The variation among cities also represents remarkably different social and economic priorities, and a willingness by various cities to experiment. We examine the effects of varying transportation policies by studying people’s attitudes and compliance to the policies.
Beyond China’s transportation policies, we also examine the multi-dimensional characteristics, unbalanced processes, and divergent paths of China’s urbanization. We study, for instance, the evolution of China’s Hukou system, and recent land-ownership policy changes, in both cases considering their impact on internal rural-urban migration.
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Measuring policy leakage of Beijing’s car ownership restriction
Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice(2021)In response to severe traffic congestion and air pollution, Beijing introduced a car ownership restriction policy to curb growth in the number of private cars in the city. However, Beijing residents can still purchase and register their cars in neighboring cities and this “leakage” may substantially reduce the policy’s effectiveness. Using city-level data collected from the CEIC China Premium Database, we aim to quantify the spill-over effect: the impact of Beijing’s policy on the growth of private car registrations in neighboring cities. We first deploy a synthetic control method to create a weighted combination of non-treated cities for each treated city. We then employ a difference-in-differences approach to estimate the policy leakage. Our models suggest that the policy resulted in additional 443,000 cars sold in the neighboring cities (within 500 km of Beijing) from 2011-2013, compared to if the policy had not been implemented. 35%-40% of the car growth reduction stipulated by the policy simply spilled over to neighboring cities. The significance of the policy leakage necessitates positioning Beijing’s urban transportation in a broader context and executing regional collaboration.
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What prompts the adoption of car restriction policies among Chinese cities
International Journal of Sustainable Transportation(2020)Facing rapid motorization, many Chinese municipalities are implementing policies that restrict car ownership or use. However, there is significant variation in terms of which cities adopt these policies and when. This research systematically investigates what factors prompt local governments in China to adopt these car restriction policies. We collect a database of car restriction policies as well as economic, demographic, land use, and transportation indicators for 287 Chinese municipalities from 2001 to 2014. We adopt a mixed methods approach that combines a qualitative investigation of stated objectives and legislative precedent within policy documents with a quantitative duration model of policy adoption. We find that the adoption of comprehensive car ownership and use restriction policies across Chinese cities primarily responds to local air pollution and secondarily to car ownership and congestion. Policy adoption additionally responds to local subway line constructions. Local economic power and population size do not effectively explain policy adoption. Idiosyncratic effects at provincial or city levels are important, although the underlying mechanisms by which these network effects manifest remain unclear. Broadly, our findings suggest that problem solving and network effects both contribute to the adoption of car restriction policies across China’s cities and that the legal policy documents reliably illustrate the motivations of these policies.
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How does Ridesourcing Substitute for Public Transit? A geospatial perspective in Chengdu, China
Journal of Transport Geography(2020)The explosive growth of ridesourcing services has stimulated a debate on whether they represent a net substitute for or a complement to public transit. Among the empirical evidence that supports discussion of the net effect at the city level, analysis at the disaggregated level from a geospatial perspective is lacking. It remains unexplored the spatiotemporal pattern of ridesourcing’s effect on public transit, and the factors that impact the effect. Using DiDi Chuxing data in Chengdu, China, this paper develops a three-level structure to recognize the potential substitution or complementary effects of ridesourcing on public transit. Furthermore, this paper investigates the effects through exploratory spatiotemporal data analysis and examines the factors influencing the degree of substitution via linear, spatial autoregressive, and zero-inflated beta regression models. The results show that 33.1% of DiDi trips have the potential to substitute for public transit. The substitution rate is higher during the day (8:00–18:00), and the trend follows changes in public transit coverage. The substitution effect is more exhibited in the city center and the areas covered by the subway, while the complementary effect is more exhibited in suburban areas as public transit has poor coverage. Further examination of the factors impacting the relationship indicates that housing price is positively associated with the substitution rate, and distance to the nearest subway station has a negative association with it, while the effects of most built environment factors become insignificant in zero-inflated beta regression. Based on these findings, policy implications are drawn regarding the partnership between transit agencies and ridesourcing companies, the spatially differentiated policies in the central and suburban areas, and the potential problems in providing ridesourcing service to the economically disadvantaged population.
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Ridesourcing services such as Uber, Lyft, and DiDi are purported to be more efficient than traditional taxis because they can match passengers with drivers more effectively. Previous studies have compared the efficiency of ridesourcing and taxis in several cities. However, gaps still exist regarding the measurement and comparison between the two modes, and the reasons for the higher efficiency of ridesourcing have not been empirically examined. This paper aims to measure, compare, and explain the efficiency and variation of DiDi and taxis. The case study is conducted in Chengdu, China. We use Vehicle occupancy rate (VOR) as the efficiency measure–the percentage of time that a vehicle is occupied by a fare-paying passenger. We measure the VORs of DiDi and taxis and their spatial and temporal variations using the trip origin-destination data from DiDi and the trajectory data for taxis. The VOR patterns between DiDi and taxis are compared and contrasted, and the underlying factors that affect the difference are examined: more efficient driver-rider matching algorithm, larger scale of ridesouricng services, and the number of taxi trips per capita. Results show that the overall VOR of DiDi is six percentage points higher than taxis on the weekday and 12 percentage points higher on the weekend. However, the VOR of taxis is slightly higher than DiDi during the weekday morning peak in downtown areas. Regression models reveal that the more efficient matching and the greater scale of DiDi drivers enlarge the VOR gap between DiDi and taxis, while the number of taxi trips per capita reduce the gap. The findings have implications for both business operation and transportation policies in terms of service design, service coordination, and location-specific regulations.
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Measuring Policy Leakage of Beijing’s Car Ownership Restriction in Neighboring Cities
Transportation Research Board 99th Annual MeetingWashington, D.C.,(2020)Beijing's license plate lottery policy was originally designed to curb the growth of local vehicle population. However, the avoidance behaviors such as local residents registering their cars in neighboring cities offsets the policy effect. Using the city-level data collected from the CEIC China Premium Database, this study quantitatively identifies the causal effect of the implementation of Beijing's car ownership restriction policy on the growth of private vehicles in neighboring cities. We first use a synthetic control method creating a weighted combination of non-treated cities for each treated city, then employ a difference in difference approach to test the policy leakage effect. The result shows a causal effect of 5.9% on average of Beijing's car ownership restriction policy on the growth of private vehicles in neighboring cities, which amounts to 549 thousand cars. The magnitude of the policy leakage declines by 7.1% every 100 km of driving distance away from Beijing within the 500 km boundary. Our result suggests that as much as 35.4% of the growth in private vehicle population that could have been reduced by the policy simply spilled over to neighboring cities. The significance of the policy leakage necessitates putting Beijing's congestion issues in a broader context and executing regional collaboration. Accordingly, we give some policy suggestions such as parking lots construction, transit system improvement and job- housing co-location.
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Transportation Policy Profiles of Chinese City Clusters: A Mixed Method Approach
Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives(2019)Chinese cities have experienced diverse urbanization and motorization trends that present distinct challenges for municipal transportation policymaking. However, there is no systematic understanding of the unique motorization and urbanization trends of Chinese cities and how physical characteristics map to their transportation policy priorities. We adopt a mixed-method approach to address this knowledge gap. We conduct a time-series clustering of 287 Chinese cities using eight indicators of urbanization and motorization from 2001-2014, identifying four distinct city clusters. We compile a policy matrix of 21 policy types from 44 representative cities and conduct a qualitative comparison of transportation policies across the four city clusters. We find clear patterns among policies adopted within city clusters and differences across clusters. Wealthy megacities (Cluster#1) are leveraging their existing urban rail with multimodal integration and transit-oriented development, while more car-oriented wealthy cities (Cluster#2) are building urban rail and discounting public transport. Sprawling, medium-wealth cities (Cluster#3) are opting for electric buses and the poorest, dense cities with low mobility levels (Cluster#4) have policies focused on road-building to connect urban cores to rural areas. Transportation policies among Chinese cities are at least partially reflective of urbanization and motorization trends and policy learning needs to account for these distinct patterns in both physical conditions and policy priorities. Our mixed-method approach (involving time-series clustering and qualitative policy profiling) provides a way for government officials to identify peer cities as role models or collaborators in forming more targeted, context-specific, and visionary transportation policies.
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Transportation Policymaking in Beijing and Shanghai: Contributors, Obstacles, and Process
Case Studies on Transport Policy(2019)With continued motorization and urbanization in Chinese cities, there is a growing demand for innovative transportation policies at the city level to address the challenges of congestion, local air pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions. Using Beijing and Shanghai as case studies, this paper draws on 32 in-depth semi-structured interviews with municipal government officials, academics, and transportation professionals to explore the city-level transportation policymaking process in Chinese megacities. Across the two cities, we identify three common contributors – policy learning, data informatization, and public opinion—and four obstacles—public complaint, unilateral decision-making, inadequate coordination among relevant departments, and lack of adaptiveness in policy implementation practice—to adopting timely and appropriate transportation policies. We then introduce a processual model that connects the contributors and obstacles identified within the flow of transportation policy among key actors in city-level government. This process shows how transportation policymaking in Chinese megacities is often reactive to public outcry over a transportation problem. This problem is investigated by a technical government research center that reports to the municipal transport committee. This committee then assesses public opinion and submits a policy recommendation to city government leadership, who make the final policy decision. Based on both case studies, we discuss potential recommendations for how to better enable transportation policymaking at the city level in China through more formalized processes of policy experimentation and public participation. We conclude with a discussion of limitations and areas of future research.
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Legitimacy vs morality: Why do the Chinese obey the law?
Law and Human Behavior42,(2018)This study explored two aspects of the rule of law in China: (1) motivations for compliance with 4 groups of everyday laws and regulations and (2) determinants of the legitimacy of legal authorities. We applied a structural equations model, constructed from Tyler’s conceptual process-based self-regulation model with morality added as a motivation, to online questionnaire responses from 1,000 Shanghai drivers. We explored the compliance with four particular groups of laws: public disturbance; conventional traffic laws; illegal downloading; and distracted driving. The results were threefold. First, for all four groups of laws, the perceived morality influenced compliance consistently and more strongly than the perceived legitimacy of the authorities and all other motivations. The influence of perceived legitimacy of authorities was inconsistent across the four groups of laws tested. Second, the influence of perceived severity of punishment was consistent and significant across all four groups of laws, whereas perceived risk of apprehension had no significant impact on compliance. Third, evaluations of procedural fairness, not those concerning the equitable distribution of law enforcement services and effectiveness of law enforcement, were most strongly linked to legitimacy. In addition to showing that China is a law-abiding society governed by morality, these results underscore the importance of examining morality and magnitude of punishment as potential motivations for compliance in addition to legitimacy and certainty of punishment. They also illustrate the necessity to examine different groups of laws separately when studying compliance. Finally, these results challenge the linkage between legitimacy and compliance previously established in the literature.
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Distributional Effects of Lotteries and Auctions —License Plate Regulations in Guangzhou
Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice106,(2017)Lotteries and auctions are common ways of allocating public resources, but they have rarely been used simultaneously in urban transportation policies. This paper presents a unique policy experiment in Guangzhou, China, where lotteries and auctions are used in conjunction to allocate vehicle licenses. Guangzhou introduced vehicle license regulations to control the monthly quota of local automobile growth in 2012. To obtain a license, residents are required to choose between the lottery and auction method. Since the introduction of the regulations, there has been heated debates on the distributional effects of lotteries and auctions; however, the debates have not been grounded in empirical studies. We analyze the distributional effects of such mixed mode of resource allocation in a positive manner based on individual behavioral choices. We conducted a survey in January 2016 (n = 1,000 people * 12 months), and used mixed logit models to analyze how socio-economic status, including income and automobile ownership, determined people’s choices among lottery, auction, and non-participation alternatives. We find that income increased participation, but did not influence non-car owners’ choices between lotteries and auctions, which contrasts with the common notion that lotteries benefit the poor. Additionally, the positive impact of car ownership on participation indicates a car-dependent trajectory for automobile growth. The significant socio-economic differentiators between lotteries and auctions were age, gender, and education. Proxies of mobility needs were insignificant overall. The program attributes had a much larger impact than all other variables—people were more likely to choose lotteries with higher winning rates and more participants and more likely to choose auctions with higher prices and more participants. We concluded that for those who participated, the choice between lotteries and auctions did not depend on their income or mobility needs but, rather, the probability of winning plates and the opportunity for speculation.
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Shaping Rapidly Growing Chinese Cities: Lessons in the Behavioural Impacts of Transport Finance Choices
Improving Urban Access: New Approaches to Funding Transport InvestmentLondon,(2016)The need to finance urban access to meet mobility needs in both the developed and developing worlds in a sustainable fashion is undeniable. However, the way the money is raised has an impact on travel and location behavior. This chapter focuses on how accessibility can bridge the gap between land-based financing and mobility-based financing.
After examining the theoretical effects of pricing on accessibility, we focus on two Chinese examples. The first case emphasizes the diversity of vehicle ownership policies in Chinese cities that indirectly influence location choice and urban form via car ownership and travel behaviour. The second focuses on land sales that have a direct influence from finance to urban form in terms of the pace and location of the development, and speculates on the influence on accessibility. The data used to examine the impacts of these policies on the distribution of accessibility between migrants and residents, rich and poor, and car owners and non-car owners is important.
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Normative and Image Motivations for Compliance with Sustainable Transportation Policy
Urban Studies(2016)Compliance with laws and regulations intended to protect common pool resources in the urban context is essential in tackling problems such as pollution and congestion. A high level of non-compliance necessitates an investigation into motivations behind compliance. The long-held instrumental theory emphasising the dependence of compliance on tangible deterrence measures fails to adequately explain empirical findings. More recently established compliance models incorporate normative, instrumental and image factors as motivations for compliance. We investigate the importance of normative and image motivations for transportation policy compliance, and the influence of the hukou (China’s household registration) on the composition of motivations. Through a case study of Shanghai’s license auction policy to inhibit car growth, we use a structural equation model and data from a survey (n = 1389) of policy attitudes and compliance behaviour. The results show that both locals and migrants comply because of instrumental motivation. However, for locals, normative and image motivations not only influence compliance but do so to a greater degree than instrumental motivations. This stands in stark contrast with the fact that there was no statistical relationship between normative and image motivations and compliance for migrants. The significant contribution of normative and image motivations to compliance in locals bears positive implications for compliance, but the absence of that in migrants is worrying. If only instrumental motivations matter, then the government is really constrained in how it can go about keeping social order. Compliance obtained strictly through social control indicates an unsustainable state of governance. -
Fixing China’s Distorted Urban Land Quota System
Paulson Institute Policy MemoChicago,(2015)Chinese cities face two related problems: first, a shortage of land available for development, and second, wasted allocation of that land. Taken together, these two problems constrain local economic and social development at a time when cities are growing rapidly. Indeed, more than fifteen years after China decided to marketize land in 1998, China’s land market, to a large extent, remains inefficient. This distortion of China’s urban land market derives mainly from problems of supply. There are three main sources of urban land supply in China: (1) the conversion of agricultural land into urban land; (2) the conversion of rural construction land into urban land; and (3) the redevelopment of the existing stock of urban land. This memorandum focuses on the first and second sources of supply. It begins by exploring the sources of inefficiency in China’s current land market. The government has attempted to undertake reforms, but China’s one size-fits-all national land allocation policy does not sufficiently take account of local variations. In practice, the inflexibility of land policies at the local level prohibits market Introduction mechanisms from responding to—and correcting—these inefficiencies. The memo then turns to two specific reform experiments: “Quota linking” is an innovation that has allowed local governments to get around quota restrictions. If they increase the supply of arable land by reducing construction in rural areas, local governments are permitted to increase their quota of land for development in urban areas, thus establishing a “link.” “Quota markets” are a further evolution of this idea and have marketized the quota system by permitting officials in selected municipalities to trade their quotas outside local counties and in the entire prefecture. Both experiments are controversial, yet the Chinese government has decided to move forward and scale them up. By 2013, Beijing had already allowed 29 provinces to proceed with quota linking or quota market experiments. With these programs now underway, this memorandum offers several recommendations aimed at putting safeguards in place to minimize the adverse effects and side effects of quota markets.
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Rise and Decline of the Bicycle in Beijing
Transportation Research Board 93rd Annual Meeting(2014)The strong tradition of bicycle use in Beijing has been in continuous decline since the mid1990s with bicycle share of vehicular traffic dropping from 62.7% in 1986 to 38.5% in 2000 and dropping even lower to 16.4% in 2010. Among various factors contributing to the rise and fall of bicycle use in Beijing, four are identified as having the greatest impact: policy and regulation, built environment, bicycle industry and socio-economic conditions. Through a historical review and analysis of the relationship between bicycle use change and the four factors mentioned above, this article reveals the following: (1) the historically inherited, grid street network system and the low rise, high-density housing form contained fundamental features that favoured cycling; (2) the integration of non-motorized modes in the road network, as well as the growing bicycle industry and moderately increased income were major contributing factors of the bicycle boom from the early-1980s to mid-1990s; (3) the National Automobile Industry Policy published in 1994 had a detrimental impact, triggered a dramatic decline of bicycle use. The city’s current transportation planning lacks not only a real interest in sustaining the tradition of bicycle use, but also a clear target and an integrated approach for reviving bicycle use. However, the strong existing bicycle industry, the remaining high level of bicycle ownership, and the shrinking but still preserved bicycle route networks in the city provide solid foundation for a more progressive bicycle planning policy.
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Lotteries vs. Auctions: China’s Experiments in Managing Automobile Growth
Asia Pacific MemoVancouver,(2013)The astronomical growth in the number of private cars in China has led to very visible environmental crises and congestion. But the nationwide increase conceals crucial policy differences between cities that influence effectiveness, revenue, efficiency, equity and public acceptance. While Shanghai and Beijing each had approximately 2 million motor vehicles in 2004, by 2010 Beijing had 4.8 million versus Shanghai’s 3.1 million. By 2011, 38% of Beijing households were vehicle owners in contrast to 18% in Shanghai. Two decades ago Shanghai opted for a monthly license auction to control vehicle ownership, while Beijing had few controls over usage or ownership until the run up to the 2008 Olympics
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Has Transportation Demand of Shanghai, China, Passed Its Peak Growth?
Journal of the Transportation Research Board2394,(2013)On the basis of four comprehensive transportation surveys in Shanghai, China, this study examined the latest trends in Shanghai's travel demand; investigated their social, economic, and spatial drivers; and compared the pace of travel demand growth in three periods: 1980s to early 1990s, early 1990s to mid-2000s, and mid-2000s to the present. The demand growth was relatively slow in the first period and then sped up in the second before it returned to a slower pace in the third period. As for trip purpose, Shanghai's travel is much more diversified than previously, with an increasing share of noncommuting trips (from 28% in 1995 to 46% in 2009). Spatially, travel demand is dispersed from the central district to peripheral districts because of urban expansion and decentralization and from Puxi (west of the Huangpu River) to Pudong (east of the Huangpu River) as a result of significant economic development of the Pudong New Area. Both spatial diffusion and purpose diversification favor the convenience and flexibility of private motor vehicles. Driven by rapid motorization, vehicle travel is growing at a much faster pace than person travel. Overall, the annual growth rate for travel demand in Shanghai reached its peak in 2004 for both person trips and vehicle trips. In absolute numbers, person trip growth has peaked, but vehicle trip growth has not. In response to the growing demand, especially rapid motorization, the local government has made tremendous investments in road infrastructure and public transit, and it has attempted to manage demand through vehicle ownership control.
Team Members
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Jungwoo Chun
PhD 2022 -
Shenhao Wang
Postdoctoral Associate -
Joanna Moody
PhD 2019 -
Xuenan Ni
MCP/MST 2019 -
Rachel Luo
MCP/MST 2021 -
Jinhua Zhao
Professor of Cities and Transportation -
Liyan Xu
PhD 2016 -
Paul Kishimoto
PhD 2018 -
Shan Jiang
Postdoctoral Associate -
Jake Gao
PhD 2024