Cars with even and odd number license plates will alternate daily in using the city’s roads, they explained.
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Under the red alert, all heavy vehicles are banned, 30 percent of vehicles are taken off the roads, most schools are closed, businesses are urged to implement flexible working hours and large-scale outdoor activities should be cancelled.
A gray haze hung over the city with levels of PM2.5 harmful microscopic particles that penetrate deep into the lungs at times above 300 micrograms per cubic meter, according to the United States embassy.
There are many questions facing the first and highest alert since 2013 when Beijing adopted an emergency response program for air pollution.
However, even with the potential difficulties, Ma Jun believes the red alert emergency warning will greatly benefit the people of Beijing. Every day since then he has walked from Beijing’s old lanes, Tiananmen Square, Bird’s Nest National Stadium to the headquarters of the Ministry of Environmental Protection.
It came a week after thick grey smog shrouded Beijing, cutting visibility severely and sending PM 2.5 levels as high as 634 micrograms per cubic metre.
Beijing’s air quality fell to the worst category on its air quality index (AQI) on Tuesday and the red alert system kicked in.
The Beijing Education Commission issued a notice last night asking all middle, primary schools and kindergartens to suspend classes during the red alert period. Officials said extra trains and buses would be added to handle the additional strain on public transport. Viewing one chemical plant, inspector Zhang Yongge said all three of its sets of desulfurizing equipment have been running at full capacity since the orange alert was issued.
Despite some improvement in Beijing’s air over the past year, readings of unsafe particles yesterday were as high as a dozen times the safe level, in what has become an embarrassment for a government that has made a priority of cleaning up the legacy of pollution left from years of full-tilt economic growth.
Authorities are under fire for failing to issue a red-alert last week when Beijing was also covered by unsafe smog.
Six people have died and another four have been injured in a 33-vehicle pileup in heavy smog on a highway in north China’s Shanxi Province on Tuesday morning. “It shows they really want to initiate this alert system and deal with air pollution”.
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China is the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter and aims to halve its emissions peak by 2030.
