Huge passageways, each measuring 1,640 feet wide, will be created using parks, rivers, lakes, highways and low building blocks, reported the People’s Daily Online. The five major corridors will run largely from the capital’s northern suburban areas to the south. One corridor will run through the central axis of Beijing from Taiping Suburban Park in the northern Changping District via the Olympic Park, the Temple of Heaven and all the way to the Beijing-Shanghai Highway in the southern end of the city.
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Other Chinese cities like Shanghai and Fuzhou have been constructing ventilation corridors to get rid of pollution.
“Ventilation corridors can improve wind flow through a city, which helps to disperse pollutants and heat”, Wang said. The ventilation corridors could facilitate air flow and blow away potential smog and pollutants.
Beijing has issued two smog red alerts, its highest pollution warning, since December 2015.
Local residents routinely check air quality and wear masks, and many own air purifiers.
The authorities have blamed the worsening of air quality on Beijing’s “winter heating season”, which began on Nov 15, reported the Wall Street Journal.
Previously, Beijing issued its first-ever red alert when the AQI exceeded 200 for 72 hours continuously.
Last month, Beijing announced it’ll be closing 2,500 companies that contribute significant pollution.
Environment Minister Chen Jining said on Thursday that weather conditions, including unusually high humidity and low wind speeds, had worsened the smog a year ago, but he added that the authorities still needed to respond better to emergencies.
Beijing is in desperate need of clearing its pollution as previous year it recorded only 186 days of air quality up to par, according to statistics from the city’s Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau (MEP).
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Beijing’s average PM 2.5 readings decreased by 6.2 percent in 2015, with an average reading of 80.6.
