Cars line up in a traffic jam along a road in Beijing on May 12, 2010. The number of vehicles registered in Beijing picked up pace in early 2010, government figures showed, putting the Chinese capital on course to have five million cars on the roads by year's end. Photo: LIU JIN/AFP/Getty Images

What do the one of the world’s most populous cities and the car capital of the world have in common? Three guesses: traffic, traffic and even more traffic to come.

To that end, the Beijing Municipal Commission of Transport and the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority are teaming up to better manage urban congestion.

The Ministry of Transport in China, seeking global advice on that country’s growing traffic jams, liked what the Federal Transit Administration reported in its quarterly progress review of Metro in January — chiefly that Metro was active in a variety of fronts to contain traffic.

The Ministry invited Metro’s Deputy CEO Paul Taylor — with 30 years experience in the field — to visit China and have a look at the rapidly expanding traffic knot in Beijing.

Taylor, recently returned from a week’s worth of meetings and two workshops, met with transportation officials to discuss cooperation between the Commission of Transport and Metro and returned with a proposed agreement to pool traffic management expertise. The agreement does not involve any exchange of funding resources. Even the travel expenses were sparse, split down the middle, said Taylor.

Described in the draft memorandum as a “cooperative partnership to relieve urban traffic congestion,” the agreement would work both ways. In memorandum speak: The Commission of Transport and Metro will exchange “achievements in congestion monitoring, analytic research and system construction and borrow each other’s experience in work management and systematic construction.” Continue reading →