Guangzhou’s bus system wins UN award
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E-mail China Daily, December 7, 2012
The bus rapid-transit system in Guangzhou, the capital of South China’s Guangdong province, stood out from among 100 applicants around the globe and was selected as one of this year’s nine Lighthouse Activities.
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A bus in Guangzhou [file photo] |
The UN Climate Change secretariat’s Momentum for Change Lighthouse Activities awards honor projects that either help curb greenhouse gas emissions or help people adapt to climate change, while at the same time benefit the urban poor.
Carrying an average of 850,000 passengers every day, Guangzhou’s bus rapid transit system has a larger capacity than any other such system in Asia as well as the second-largest capacity in the world. It reduced carbon dioxide emissions by more than 45,000 tons in 2010 and is expected to achieve an annual reduction of 86,500 tons in the following 10 years.
Xian Weixiong, director of Guangzhou’s Transportation Committee, which is in charge of the operation of the system, is proud that the system has received international recognition and become a model of sustainable transportation for other countries.
One of the key criteria for the selection of the Lighthouse Activities is that they have the potential to be replicated in other countries and communities. The Guangzhou transit system meets that criterion. The system’s designers, the Guangzhou Municipal Engineering Design and Research Institute and the China office of Institute for Transportation and Development Policy, have introduced the system to other cities home and abroad, including Ulan Bator, Mongolia, and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
More than 130 cities from over 36 countries have sent delegates to Guangzhou to learn from the city’s bus rapid transit system.
The nine winning projects were showcased at a special event on Tuesday at the UN Climate Change Conference in Doha, Qatar. The other eight selected projects included the promotion of electric buses and rickshaws in Sri Lanka; energy-efficient brick kilns in Peru; and a door-to-door green energy social enterprise with a women-driven direct sales network in Uganda.
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