China's capital is weighing new restrictions on car use aimed at curbing the increasingly severe traffic congestion born of China's growing love affair with the automobile.
Gridlock-fighting measures being considered include fees for drivers to use certain congested roads and a system that would bar vehicles from some roads during peak traffic times, depending on whether the final digit of their license plates is an odd or even number, according to a proposal posted for public comment Monday on the Beijing Municipal Commission of Transport's website.
The commission also pledged to build more freeways, subways and parking structures, including park-and-ride facilities. And it recommended raising parking fees and called on residents to work more from home and to use bicycles more—an effort to reverse the near disappearance of pedaled transport over the past decade as car use has exploded in the capital.
The measures could change or be eliminated before any new rules are made final. Monday's document left vague many details, including timing, and the committee didn't respond to a request to comment.
Traffic-rule changes in China's capital have been hotly debated for weeks, although only a trickle of comments appeared in Internet forums after the specific proposals were offered on the commission's website. Drivers want improvements, of course, but many people still want to buy cars and are angry about how the situation got so bad.
Beijing's congestion "is actually caused by planning mistakes made earlier by the government," one Beijing resident said in a comment posted on Tianya, a popular Internet forum in China. Ordinary citizens were pushed out of central Beijing to make room for the government and businesses, so "during morning rush hours, people are flooding into the central city, while in the evening, people are rushing out from the city center."
Still, the range of proposed measures reflects the government's struggle to get traffic under control in the face of a seemingly insatiable appetite for cars from China's rising middle class. China last year surpassed the U.S. as the biggest car market by annual sales, and the increase in driving has occurred so quickly that many cities like Beijing haven't been able to adjust.
Beijing undertook a major expansion of its public-transit system ahead of the 2008 Summer Olympics, adding new subway and bus lines, and barred selected private vehicles from downtown roads one business day each week based on their license plate numbers. That measure has remained in effect, but its initial benefits have been overwhelmed by the increase in new cars.
The number of cars registered in Beijing, a city of nearly 20 million people, has nearly doubled, to 4.7 million this year from 2.6 million in 2005, the transport commission said. State media have cited government researchers saying that if nothing is done, the average speed of car traffic in the capital could slow to 15 kilometers, or nine miles, per hour, by 2015—about the speed of easy bicycling.
A highway leading into Beijing was the site of one of the world's most notorious traffic jams, a snarl that recurred repeatedly over weeks this summer and stretched as long as 100 kilometers at times—although that jam was caused mainly by commercial-truck traffic.
Some parts of China already have limits on driving. Shanghai, for example, limits the issuance of new license plates. And state media have said other locales, such as eastern provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang, are considering measures such as requiring residents to secure a parking space before being allowed to buy a car.
Traffic in Beijing has gotten so bad that residents and media have speculated for months that new curbs would be coming. Concerns there might be limits on new purchases, combined with expectations that the national government might end some incentives for buying smaller cars, has helped fuel a rush of car-buying in recent months as people try to get ahead of the rules.
Some auto-industry executives and analysts think curbs like those being considered in Beijing could slow car-sales growth. Xiong Chuanlin, vice secretary of the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, told a news conference last week that car sales growth in China will likely slow to about 10% in 2011 after growing nearly 50% in 2009 and more than 30% this year.
Monday's statement said "pressures from traffic are becoming overwhelming" in Beijing. "A series of measures are thus needed to ease traffic congestion, which is becoming worse by the day," it said.
Its other proposals include capping at current levels the number of cars that can be purchased each year by government agencies—a nod to the huge number of official vehicles, many of them luxury cars, that clog the streets. And, the municipal government is urging residents to telecommute and encouraging companies to allow employees to work more flexible hours.
Many residents in Beijing are likely to welcome efforts to improve traffic. But levying higher parking fees and congestion charges are tricky for the government because the effects of those uniform parking fees and traffic charges burden lower-income residents in a country where the widening wealth gap is a major social issue.