Shenzhen could consider limiting the registration of new vehicles to ease road congestion which is likely to turn roads into car parks.
Li Ming, chief of the public security bureau, made the remarks at the annual session of the municipal people s congress Monday.
Li said traffic congestion was a serious problem facing the city. The number of Shenzhen-registered vehicles reached 1.7 million last year. Together with another 300,000 cars registered elsewhere, vehicle density in Shenzhen had reached 300 cars per kilometer of road.
He told the meeting that the city government was studying the possibility of following Beijing by limiting the number of new registrations.
Beijing started limiting new vehicle registrations in January. It would now allow only 240,000 vehicles to be registered this year, a figure equal to a little more than one-third of the total number of new cars registered last year. The registrations are allocated by a license plate lottery system.
Shenzhen roads have become increasingly congested in recent years. On New Year s Day, a public holiday in China, trunk roads including Binhai and Shennan boulevards were jammed. A few years ago, public holidays meant smooth traffic flows across the city.
Traffic during peak hours were particularly worse. It took more than three hours to cover only 6 kilometers on Binhe Road during the evening rush hours Sept. 11 last year.
China overtook the United States in 2009 as the world s biggest car market, with sales surging 45 percent to 13.6 million vehicles.