Traffic chaos returned to the streets of Beijing yesterday, after a four-day experiment to see if taking 1.3 million of the city's three million cars off the streets would help clear gridlock and boost air quality for next year's Olympics.
Commuters and commentators alike were calling for the air quality exercise - which Beijing's municipal government ran from Friday to yesterday - to now become a regular fixture.
Cars with odd and even number plates were alternately allowed on the roads during these four days.
The exercise was to study the effect of car emissions on air quality, the effect of vehicle numbers on traffic and whether public transportation could cope with the reduction of private cars.
The cars were back with a vengeance yesterday and the difference to traffic flow was extreme. A trip from one side of north Beijing to the other took more than an hour, with the Third Ring Road jammed. The same journey, at the same time, one day earlier took 15 minutes.
The question everyone was asking was: what impact did the exercise have on pollution and would Beijing clear the air in time for the Olympics?
Paradoxically, the skies were blue and cloudless yesterday, with a slight wind dispersing the pollution.
The air seemed slightly better during the exercise, but there were also polluted times, and it was difficult to tell whether the slight improvement was down to the time of year or the air quality exercise.
The weather on Friday improved as the day went on, Saturday was cloudy, Sunday is usually not too bad for traffic so it was hard to tell and Beijing's sky remained mostly grey and misty on Monday, which the China Daily said was "a result of stuffy, humid late summer weather", but others believed it was pollution.
The Oriental Morning Post praised the improvement in traffic flow, decline in the number of accidents and better air quality during the four-day experiment, but said it should not just be for the Olympics.
"In cities like Beijing and Shanghai, the number of vehicles will rapidly increase. Besides congestion, air and noise pollution may become serious social problems. The successful four-day exercise, welcomed by residents, has provided transportation management with a good reference," ran an editorial in the paper.
"However, apart from government efforts to citizens' co-operation, from technical advancement in urban management to the upgrading of administrative concepts, more must be done to improve traffic and environmental quality," it warned.
And there are other measures to be introduced. Beijing plans to put 50,000 bicycles for rent across the city ahead of the games, to curb pollution and ease congestion.
Brand new bikes will be available at 230 outlets close to subway stations, commercial districts, Olympic venues, hotels and office buildings and in big communities, according to a "rent a bike" program carried out by Beijing Bicycle Rental Services.