Hangzhou has announced steps to fight traffic congestion that’s so bad it has earned the nickname of du cheng, or clogged city. Plans call for investing over 17 billion yuan (US$2.7 billion) to add more subways, buses and taxis, to build more roads, and to persuade people to obey traffic rules.

The Hangzhou Government Work Report of 2014 released last month put “solving traffic congestion” at the top of the city agenda. The total of 17.3 billion yuan will be spent on 34 transport projects this year.

“We do not want for transportation to get only a temporary fix. We want to see improvement every day,” said Hu Shaoxiang, director of Hangzhou Congestion Control Office. The office was set up a year ago to battle the traffic jam problem.

Hangzhou’s traffic problems are not new. The average speed for vehicles driving during the day in urban Hangzhou is around a sluggish 20km/h, and during rush hour it’s about 15km/h, according to local traffic authorities.

The number of private cars in urban Hangzhou had exceeded 1 million by last year, for a population in the area of less than 4 million.

Road management

However, a local traffic expert, Professor Wu Weiqiang of Zhejiang University of Technology, thinks the biggest cause of the traffic jams is not the large number of cars, but instead is “an inadequate road network and public transport system, and a low level of road management.”

According to Wu’s analysis, the city’s road network should be structured like a pyramid, with a larger amount of elevated roads at the bottom, followed by main roads, secondary main roads and small local roads at the narrower top. But in urban Hangzhou, there is only one elevated road in the city center, few small local roads and many dead-end streets.

“What worsens the situation are the complicated traffic lights and signs, unreasonable placement of medians and too many ‘zebra’ crosswalks,” he said.

Motorist Jia Fu from the nearby city of Jiaxing, who shuttles between the two cities for work, fully agrees. “I got ticketed a lot the first time I drove to Hangzhou because the complicated signs confused me.”

He complained that there are too many restrictions on turning, and unreasonable rules like drivers wanting to turn right should figure that out far in advance and move over to the partitioned lanes on the right side. Jia said he prefers to take train to Hangzhou.

The city’s transportation plan needs some radical surgery, and that looks like what the government has in mind.

The plan starts with subways. Up to 70 kilometers of subway lines will be built this year. Here’s the particulars: The southeast part of Metro Line 2 will put into use by June, the extension of Line 1 will open next year, the southern section of Line 4 is to start running in 2017, and the entirety of Line 2 will be completed in 2018.

Plans to build rail track for neighboring sub-cities, such as the Fuyang Line and the Lin’an Line, also are on the agenda.

Roads are the next piece of the puzzle. A total of 40km of roads will be built this year, including main roads like underpass of Wenyi Road M., Zizhi Tunnel linking northwest and southwest Hangzhou, and eventually, some elevated roads.

Urban Hangzhou now has four elevated roads and one expressway. Zhonghe Elevated Road connecting south and north; Shangtang Elevated Road, actually an extension of Zhonghe in the north; Qiushi Elevated Road east to Shangtang; Jichang Elevated Road heading to Xiaoshan International Airport, and Raocheng Expressway encircling the city.

Considering that both Qiushi and Jichang are suburban, and Raocheng Expressway is a toll road, Zhonghe as well as its extension Shangtang comprise the city’s traffic arteries.

But the arteries are blocked every morning and evening, and locals like to call driving on elevated road “parking the car there.”

The third phase of Qiushi Elevated Road is expected to take cars off of Zhonghe. It runs from Southern Shide Interchange to Qingjiang Road Interchange, also connecting south and north Hangzhou on the east side of the city.

Another project to be built on the east side is a road and bridge that will connect Xiasha Town and Xiaoshan District, which will allow drivers to get across the Qiantang River in only five minutes.

Also on tap is the widening of Jichang Elevated Road, which will start next month. The project will have seven interchanges.

But frequent fliers may find their route to Xiaoshan International Airport busier as a result of this three-year project.

During the project, airline passengers should search for alternate routes and allow at least two hours for the trip to the airport.

Two new roads in East Hangzhou will be built by the end of year as well.

Also targeted are 24 dead-end roads and lanes. Nine will be extended to remove the dead end this year, and the rest will be done in following years, according to authorities.

Also in the plan are 50,000 more car parking spaces, 1,000 more taxis and 10 more bus routes.

Another key part of the plan is to reduce frequent traffic offenses by both drivers and pedestrians.

Starting this month, a traffic management task force will oversee traffic offenses and make sure offenders are fined on six severely congested roads, including Wensan Road, Huancheng Road E. and Moganshan Road in the city center.

Such violations as red-light running, drunken driving, illegal parking, changing lanes across solid line, speeding and jaywalking will be closely monitored on those roads.

Traffic police also promise that more than two-thirds of their forces are assured be on duty to ease the traffic. And when it comes to morning and evening rush hours, all available police officers will be out in force.

“The stubborn problems of traffic management, such as poor city planning and illegal cabs, need to be solved by government,” Wu said.

“But citizens also should fulfill their responsibility by obeying traffic rules.”

Hangzhou Metro

Hangzhou started building its Metro system in 2007, and the first line, Metro Line 1, was put into use in 2012. Overall, 10 lines totaling over 375 kilometer are to be built in Hangzhou, connecting its urban and suburban areas, including Yuhang and Xiaoshan districts. It is expected that by 2020, the majority of the 10 lines will be in operation. Last month, the local government released a five-year plan with the following goals:

Metro Line 1: Tunnels and tracks for three more stops in Xiasha Town are to be built this year and open next year.

Metro Line 2: Southeastern section of the line from Chaoyangcun Station to Qianjiang Road Station will start trial operation by June.

Metro Line 4: The northern half from Jinjiang Station to Pengbu Station will be built and put in use next year. Its southern section will put into use in 2017.

Metro Line 5 and 6: Construction will start this year.

Hangzhou public bicycles

Hangzhou, which has “one of the world’s eight best public bicycle service systems,” according to the BBC, now has 78,000 public bicycles that are rented out to tourists and locals 260,000 times a day on average.

This year, Hangzhou will add 3,000 more bicycles for public use at 80 rental stations. Most of them will be based in residential areas. Previously, many of the rental stations were set up in the city center and main roads.

The city has around 3,000 public bicycle rental stations in both urban and suburban areas.