People's Commentary: How public transport gives people dignity

Recently, the public transport problems in Beijing and other first-tier cities have aroused media attention again. Some media believe that "urban disease" is spreading in China, the first traffic problems. It is reported that Beijing has a car race, preferring to drive alone in the road, rather than by bus or subway, the reason is that the car space is too crowded, "feel squeezed out of the minimum of dignity."　　At the same time, there are also car owners said they want to have their own cars in order to bid farewell to the overcrowded "years of public life." Public transport makes people lose their dignity, and there are good reasons for public complaints. In Beijing by bus or subway, especially at the peak stage is more crowded.　　Taking the subway line Line 1 as an example, according to statistics, the instantaneous passenger capacity of the early peak line Line 1 can reach 120%, which means that a train to carry more than 20% passengers, resulting in the result is that the distance between passengers is compressed, "chest paste back" is no surprise. This has far exceeded the safe distance of interpersonal communication. In psychology, "safe distance" refers to the distance between people who feel safe and comfortable when they are together. American psychologist Edward? Hall after study found that 1.2-2.1 meters for social occasions or a safe distance between strangers, once the safe distance is destroyed, can cause a person to feel insecure and psychological imbalance.　　We cannot expect to be able to maintain a safe distance of at least 1.2 meters while taking public transport, but if the carriages are too crowded, they will destroy each other's mental safety boundaries, resulting in strong psychological imbalances such as anger, impatience and even loss of dignity. As a result, the car boom is again heating up in the country, many people would rather spend more money to buy a car than to take public transport. Ms. Xu, who lives in Tongzhou, is a typical "driving family". She told me, because in Soho office work, far away from home, before buying a car, she must get up 5 o'clock in the morning every day, walk 10 minutes to the bus station, take 40 car to the subway station, and then take the 1-hour subway, the last walk 15 minutes to the company. If the road is normal without traffic jam, it will take 2 hours. This way of reversing and transfer, is very hard, "sometimes, there is a place to stand very satisfied ..." People are very close to each other, sometimes a brake will hit the side of the people, but also often hit by people, in short, is very embarrassing.　　To this end, she decided to buy a car, finally farewell to the lack of dignity of the bus career. At present, more and more people are joining Ms. Xu, which not only presents new challenges to public transport, but also objectively exacerbates urban congestion. How to solve this problem?　　Some experts believe that the vigorous development of public transport is the basic measure to ease urban traffic pressure, but our measures should be more flexible, more targeted, and more humane. First of all, we must vigorously develop rail transit. In the centre of the World's cities, the average orbital network is 1-2 km/km², and Beijing is expected to reach 0.51 km/km² by 2015. This shows that there is still a big gap between the density of the Beijing Rail Transit Network and the World average level,Should continue to strengthen the construction efforts. Secondly, the layout of public transport should be more reasonable. Take Beijing as an example, the arrangement of bus lines to be improved, some important sites to stop the vehicles reached dozens of, a peak period, these "giants" almost completely diverted the road, objectively exacerbated the congestion.　　Therefore, should be reasonable layout of the site, according to traffic congestion, timely correction. Third, public transport should be differentiated pricing for different groups of people. At present, Beijing's single low fares of course benefits the general public, but there are a considerable number of people prefer a relatively comfortable environment, but also to accept higher fares, if a complete single pricing, this part of the people may turn to buy cars. Therefore, it is also beneficial to reduce traffic congestion by adding some public transport with high fares.　　Differential pricing is worthy of reference by relevant departments. Finally, any public transport should be people-oriented, to continuously increase its comfort and convenience, for example, rail transit can learn from Hong Kong's practice, more handrails, the two sides of the car to open the door and so on, the bus must pay attention to the smooth safety of driving, can not let passengers "stand uneasy", to try to create a relatively comfortable environment for passengers