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It was 8 am when I was crowded on a platform on Beijing's Line 5 in the northern part of the city. I was trying to squeeze into a peak-hour subway train to reach a destination in the south before 9:30 am, but I failed on my first five attempts. Racing against the time, I gave up the subway for a cab instead. I thought to myself, "Well, even if it's much more pricey, it's OK as long as I could be on time." I soon realized I was totally wrong when the cab got stuck in traffic on the fourth ring road. Luckily, I left my apartment quite early and still managed to get there just on time, but the infamous Beijing traffic made pine for my days in London. The British capital is vast and populated, too. It has a higher car density per square kilometer than Beijing. But the traffic management is far better. London Mayor Boris Johnson published an article after his China visit a few weeks ago to praise the high-speed railway connecting Beijing and Shanghai. Despite this state-of-the-art project, Chinese cities actually have a lot to learn from London, particularly on urban transport. It is conventional Chinese wisdom that bigger roads make traffic less congested. But why is Beijing, with rings of huge roads, still so jammed? That's definitely not the case in London. Even Euston Road, a road in London with two lanes in each direction, is much smaller than most roads in Beijing. | 
