Warning on Olympic overbuilding

Zhou Ganzhi, a former construction minister, warned against overbuilding Beijing's road network just to handle peak traffic problems for the Olympic Games in cases where such bottlenecks would not recur after the Games were over. Making the comment at the China (Beijing) Olympic Transportation Forum, Zhou said it would be a mistake to plan facilities "according to the Olympic standard" when they would be useless afterwards. He said more attention should be paid to details like proper signage to smooth traffic flow, often disrupted now because people didn't know where they were going. "Otherwise we're squandering money and labor to find many facilities are useless after the Olympics," he was quoted as saying in China Daily.