Uber formally launched its ride-summoning smartphone app in Beijing this week. But the Chinese capital has presented the U.S. car service company with a vexing problem: how to handle the city's bumper-to-bumper traffic.
美国汽车服务公司Uber本周在北京正式推出叫车应用软件，但却面临着如何应对北京堵车的难题。
Saying 'Beijing has a traffic problem' is something of an understatement. A 2011 study by UBS showed it to be the worst among a number of Chinese cities it tracked, with average traveling speed time a glacial 12 kilometers per hour. By contrast, traffic in New York goes roughly twice as fast, a fact that would probably shock commuters idling on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. To demonstrate the problem, one media outfit once pit a Porsche against a bicycle in a race across the city's center. (Residents of the city can guess which won.)
说“北京有交通拥堵问题”有点太轻描淡写了。根据2011年瑞士银行(UBS)的一项调查，在该行跟踪的众多中国城市中，北京的交通拥堵情况最为严重，车辆平均行驶速度只有12公里/小时。相比之下，纽约的车速要比北京快一倍，这可能会让缓慢行驶在布鲁克林-皇后区快速路上的通勤者大感意外。为了彰显交通问题的严重，某媒体机构还曾搞了一次保时捷与自行车穿越市中心的比赛。（北京市民可以猜一猜谁赢了。）
Beijing is the last of what are generally considered China's four tier-one cities that Uber Technologies Inc. has entered. The app -- which in China connects users with drivers via agreements with rental-car fleet operators and driving services -- formally launched in Shanghai in February and has since been launched in the twin southern boomtowns of Guangzhou and Shenzhen.
在中国的四个一线城市中，北京是Uber Technologies Inc.最后进入的。这款应用通过与出租车运营商和驾驶服务公司之间的协议把中国用户与司机联系起来，该应用今年2月正式在上海推出，之后又在南方新兴城市广州和深圳推出。
Such cities also have their traffic problems -- and also fared poorly in UBS's traffic study -- but Uber acknowledges Beijing poses a particular problem. In addition to traffic, there's the city's sheer geographic size.
这些城市也面临交通问题，在瑞银的交通调查中也属于拥堵城市。但Uber承认，北京的问题很特别。除了交通拥堵之外，这个城市的超大地理面积也是个问题。
'Beijing is a big, complicated city,' said Allen Penn, Uber's head of Asia. He added, 'in short, we can't change the traffic.'
Uber亚洲主管Allen Penn称，北京是一个巨大的、复杂的城市。他补充说，总而言之，Uber改变不了那里的交通状况。
Its solution is to start...well, slow. The company, which is in 41 countries, soft-launched its Beijing service about three months ago with a focus just on the tony Sanlitun shopping district. With its official launch, it has added the city's Central Business District. Other rollouts will be gradual, Mr. Penn said. By contrast, when it launched in Shanghai, the app's reach covered broader swaths of that city.
Uber的解决办法是慢慢来。大约三个月前，这家目前已经进军41个国家的公司低调推出了在北京的服务，但只重点关注时髦的三里屯购物区。在北京正式发布后，该公司又将北京的中心商业区囊括在内。Penn称，将循序渐进添加其他区域。相比之下，该应用软件在上海推出时覆盖了更广阔的范围。
Mr. Penn says Uber is making progress handling the traffic and is using customer data to figure out where to best position cars and drivers. Cars now take an average of about nine minutes to reach Beijing customers, he said, compared with 14 minutes, the average when the company first soft-launched in the city. That figure puts Beijing just behind Shanghai, where customers usually wait about eight minutes for a ride.
Penn称，Uber在处理交通状况方面正在取得进步，它目前使用客户数据来计算出配置汽车和司机的最好位置。他称，目前北京客户平均需要花费大约九分钟才能打到车，而该公司在北京第一次低调推出服务时，客户平均需要花费14分钟。这样一来，北京客户的打车速度仅稍稍落后于上海，上海客户通常需要等待大约八分钟才能打上车。
Still, the nine-minute wait puts Beijing well behind New York, where rides are filled in three or four minutes, and Singapore, where it takes seven minutes. Ultimately, Mr. Penn said, Uber wants to whittle Beijing's time down to five minutes.
但九分钟的等待时间仍远远高于纽约，那里的客户打车只需要三四分钟，在新加坡使用该应用软件打车则需要七分钟。Penn称，Uber希望最终将北京客户的等待时间降至五分钟。
'It's launch day. It's day one,' he said, adding, 'we have a long way to go, clearly.'
他说：“服务才刚刚推出，今天才是第一天，我们很清楚还有很长的路要走。”