Update from Beijing:
The roads are looking pretty barren these days in Beijing right before the Olympics as close to 90% of cars have been pulled off the road. Take the 8 lane Shunyi Roadway, close in size to the Long Island Expressway, and as you can see in the pictures there's pretty much no traffic at all! Wouldn't it be great if the LIE was like this on a Friday afternoon?
No doubt this will fill up as people come for the games, but in the meantime is a pretty interesting sight that mimics the likes of a ghost town.