Guangzhou City, the capital of Guangdong province, becomes a car park every day at rush hour with cars stacked up bumper to bumper for miles until around 9:30am or 7pm at night, taxi drivers complain about their reduced salaries and increased waiting times. Currently Guangzhou adds 31,000 cars per month to its roads, or roughly 1000 units per day, obviously this is increasing the pressure on Guangzhou’s inner city roads and drastic measures have to be taken, the city has now decided that it will limit car registrations to just 120,000 units per year from July 1st.
The shock move was announced yesterday without warning, when the Beijing Municipal Government introduced its own license limitation policy in late 2010 it gave its citizens 30 days official warning but there was several months of rumor prior to the new rule that gave buyers plenty of opportunity to buy their new wheels. Although the new rule was announced at 9pm on June 30th, car dealers in the Guangzhou area heard of the news by 5pm and rushed to call their potential clients, clients came in their droves to buy up cars – in cash – ahead of the new rule, car dealers quoted by major Chinese automotive news outlets claimed that in the four hours from 5pm to 9pm their sales exceeded their monthly quotas. The new limit will see just 120,000 car license plates issued for the rest of the year, or a limit of 300 units per day, over the course of 2011 Guangzhou saw 330,000 cars sold in the city limits which accounts for a small but significant proportion of the Chinese car market.
The potential implications of the restrictions are clear in the short term, less cars on the road and less sales for dealers, but the long term implications could potentially mean that other cities will follow in Guangzhou’s footsteps and introduce their own license plate restrictions. Beijing currently limits license plate registrations to 240,000 units per year or 20,000 per month via a lottery system, Shanghai auctions its plates (which have breached the 60,000RMB barrier) and the sleepy provincial capital of Guizhou province, Guiyang, introduced its own license plate restrictions with only 2000 plates being issued each month. Should other cities follow suit, we can expect to see the Chinese car market fall considerably in the next few years.
As surprising as the timing of the announcement is, it’s not really all that unexpected. Guangzhou has earned a reputation for some of the worst traffic nightmares in China – so license plate limits are the logical step……or is it?
Something that is NEVER mentioned regarding efforts to ease the traffic problems……….BETTER DRIVING HABITS. Sure, there are a lot of cars on the streets now – but many of the more “modern” (or recently built) streets are designed to handle large volumes of cars. What streets are NOT designed to do is deal with IDIOT DRIVERS. I think it’s a reasonable guess that AT LEAST 50% of the traffic problems would be gone in a instant if people SIMPLY FOLLOWED THE LAWS AND DROVE THEIR CARS IN THE PROPER MANNER. Why doesn’t the government invest in a more modern driver education system (better schools with modern driving techniques taught, required re-testing for drivers that have had their license for 10 years or more, public awareness campaigns on the importance and effectiveness of proper driving, better enforcement by traffic police, higher fines for reckless driving maneuvers)? It could be a new revenue stream for the government, AND have a significant positive impact with overall driving conditions on China’s streets. It would also be a investment in the FUTURE for China’s streets – a whole new generation would grow up knowing a better, safer and more effective way of driving, and older drivers who don’t learn the new ways and can’t pass their required re-test would be off the roads (until they finally pass the re-test). Sure, it’s easy to limit the amount of cars that can be sold in any city that decides to do so………but until the issue of BAD DRIVING HABITS is finally dealt with, there will STILL be major problems on the streets – regardless of how many cars are actually ON the streets.