City Driving: Beijing to Cut License Plate Quota Even Further

Steven Schwankert | Nov 7, 2013 11:00 am | 5 comments | 2701 reads

Winning the Beijing license plate lottery is about to become more like ... winning the lottery.

The Beijing Municipal Government announced Tuesday that the number of available new license plates in 2014 will drop from 240,000, or 20,000 per month, to 150,000. The move is part of the city's continuing efforts to control pollution, citing automobiles as the biggest source of air quality problems. There will be no congestion charge implemented in 2014, the government said.

RELATED: City Driving: Beijing Police Blame Women Drivers for Traffic Ails

This applies only to new, private vehicles. The reduced quota was not extended to businesses, which are permitted to purchase cars based on the company size, or to the replacement of old vehicles with new ones by existing owners.

The restriction also does not apply to buyers of new-energy vehicles, which it is actively promoting. The city government has set a goal of seeing 20,000 new energy vehicles in 2014, with targets of adding 30,000 in 2015, 60,000 in 2016, and 60,000 in 2017. Beijing is actively installing both public charging stations for electric vehicles and filling stations equipped with natural gas, the announcement said.

Beijing's city government will continue to standardize parking around the city. It noted that 80 percent of parking in Beijing is still non-standard, meaning it is not attended or otherwise managed. The city expects that as parking becomes standardized, more spaces will become available, although this would seem to reduce the overall amount of parking rather than increase it. The city is hoping for 100 percent parking standardization by 2017.

Photo: Jakob Montrasio on Flickr

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Jerry's picture Jerry Submitted by Guest on Fri, 11/08/2013 - 09:29

Quote:
To suggest that the vast amounts of Beijing pollution comes primarily from private passenger vehicles is ludicrous. New cars don't cause the particle pollution you see in this city. Unregulated diesel buses and trucks do. Coal burning does. Piles of dust and dirt, combined with toxic chemicals sitting in vacant unmaintained lots do. Sure we need to improve the traffic, but the damage to people's health is being caused by the heavy particle matter. Whenever I ride my bike, I am choked by heavy vehicles and buses spewing think dark acrid smoke. The is no subtle effect about it.

 

I agree with Squid - unless the government can do something to rein in emissions coming from all of the factories belching out pollution in the neighboring provinces that ring Beijing, I don't see the air getting substantially cleaner any time soon.

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cdn_china's picture cdn_china Submitted by Guest on Thu, 11/07/2013 - 16:59

Government obviously never learned its lesson from its experience with motorcycles. After restricting legal A plate registrations, what happened? People simply bought illegal bikes and began using fake plates, or used bikes with plates from other provinces.

I once saw a TMB estimate that 1 in 8 cars in Beijing runs with improper plates. Fake car plates are readily available (watch The Beijinger classifieds for upcoming fake-plate ads, as commonly happens with fake motorcycle plates).

Strict enforcement and/or congestion charging has been shown to work elsewhere, but somehow Beijing knows better. Sad. In my opinion, Beijing still isn't serious about the problem.

admin's picture admin Submitted by Guest on Thu, 11/07/2013 - 12:21

Meanwhile, the Beijing News had this astounding statistic showing the growth in the number of automobiles in Beijing, going from 1.1 million in 1997 to 5.4 million this year (and the year ain't over)... that's an average annual growth rate of 10% a year. If that rate continues over the next 7 years, there will be 10.5 million cars in Beijing by 2020...

 

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squid's picture squid Submitted by Guest on Thu, 11/07/2013 - 12:02

To suggest that the vast amounts of Beijing pollution comes primarily from private passenger vehicles is ludicrous. New cars don't cause the particle pollution you see in this city. Unregulated diesel buses and trucks do. Coal burning does. Piles of dust and dirt, combined with toxic chemicals sitting in vacant unmaintained lots do.

Sure we need to improve the traffic, but the damage to people's health is being caused by the heavy particle matter. Whenever I ride my bike, I am choked by heavy vehicles and buses spewing think dark acrid smoke. The is no subtle effect about it.

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