From Chinese Press

Waste of time and energy

(China Daily)
Updated: 2010-06-10 10:55

Urbanization has boosted economic development, but it has also created problems, especially for office workers. Rising housing prices and bad public transportation are the two main reasons why they have to spend a lot of time commuting to office everyday, says an article on Qianlong website. Excerpts:

Two recent studies, one domestic and one foreign, have yielded similar results: office workers in China spend a lot of time commuting to and from work. The problem is attributed to urbanization.

An analysis of the reports shows that the time spent to commute to office would in long run be proportionate to housing prices. That's not a coincidence. With the rapid development of giant cities, most of the office workers cannot afford to buy a house in downtown or areas from where they can commute faster and easily to office. The result: More and more office workers are forced to live very far from their workplaces - outskirts of cities or suburbs.

Besides, public transportation is often neglected during city planning, thus making it more difficult and inconvenient for office workers to get to their workplaces. We need to make cities more convenient.

 

(China Daily 06/10/2010 page9)