A senior expert warned on Wednesday that Beijing should be aware of possible transport over-construction in its preparations for the 2008 Olympics.

Zhou Ganzhi, a former minister of construction, suggested at the China (Beijing) Olympic Transportation Forum that the city should not only rely on infrastructure construction to solve congestion, which is widely recognized as a key challenge for the 2008 Games.

Zhou said the Olympics should be seen as a special kind of 'rush hour' in which heavy traffic is concentrated in a particular period and certain area.

"We shouldn't develop the city's transport solely according to the Olympics," he said, warning that there was a risk of squandering money on facilities that will be useless afterwards.

Zhou said that municipal authorities and the Beijing Organizing Committee for the 2008 Olympic Games ( BOCOG) should pay attention to transport management as well as construction.

"People often complain, for example, about the lack of road signs and the incomprehensibility of the ones that are there … These seemingly minor problems are actually important to ensure smooth traffic," he said.

The academician, from both the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering, described transport construction as time- and money-consuming and called for more thorough planning.

"If the construction is done, it's very hard to change it. So we must have a cautious and all-round plan in accordance with the development of the city's general transport system," he said.

Dozens of experts attended the two-day forum, which started on Tuesday, to share views in tackling transportation problems for the Games.

The first such forum was in May, and discussed a wide range of issues from transportation system development to digital intelligent vehicle systems and simulations.

The Beijing Municipal Transportation Committee presented a report on the strategic transportation planning of the Beijing Olympics. Government officials, who worked with Athens organizers during the 2004 Games, also briefed the forum on the situation there.

Liu Jingmin, BOCOG's executive vice president, was present at the forum. He admitted Beijing faced a challenge but was optimistic about its prospects.

"It's also an opportunity, and I believe this city's traffic conditions will be largely improved after the 2008 Games," he said.

"We need to listen to experts' views carefully, and it should be a piece of team work bringing specialists from various fields together."

(China Daily December 9, 2004)