More than four million vehicles will hit the road this weekend in Beijing as number of new cars sold in the Chinese capital remains about 2,000 daily, the municipal traffic management bureau announced Tuesday morning.
The number of cars already running in Beijing hit 3.99 million as of Sunday, according to the bureau. No one will doubt the four million mark would be broke on the weekend, which means a quarter of the 16 million permanent residents in the city has a car.
The number of vehicles in Beijing had increased by about 10,000last week and the number of newly qualified drivers also increased 12,000 within a week, according to the bureau.
"Compared with other metropolises in the world, the growth of vehicles in Beijing is dramatic," said Guo Jifu, researcher with the Beijing Municipal Communication Research Center.
It took the national capital 48 years to make the number of vehicles grow from 2,300 in 1949 to the first one million in 1997.The second million cost six years and a half. The third only three years and nine months. The fourth million, an astonishing two years and seven months, Guo said.
Tokyo used 12 years to make its number of cars grow from three million to four million, he said.
The utilization of cars in Beijing is also more frequent than other big cities in the world. The daily traveling distance of a car is 45 km in Beijing, while 19 km in Tokyo and 30 km in London, Guo said.
"The cars in the cities overseas are mostly used in the outskirts, but they mainly run in the urban area in Beijing. That's why they have better traffic conditions than Beijing even they have much more cars," he said.
The rapidly rising cars have almost offset the positive effect of the traffic control measures from the government, which implemented a restriction on cars based on the last digit of their license plate number. The initiative took 20 percent of the cars off the roads daily starting from Oct. 11 last year.
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