SHENZHEN residents had started hoarding car license plates as unofficial reports circulated saying Shenzhen could also implement measures to control traffic.
They feared Shenzhen would limit issuing new car plates and implement harsh traffic control measures to ease the city s traffic congestion as was being done in Beijing and Shanghai, hoping to sell their car plates at higher prices, the Daily Sunshine reported.
Shenzhen had registered 1.7 million cars by the end of last year and there were about 300,000 cars from other cities in the city every day. According to official statistics, the average speed for a car during off-peak hours was about 36.3 kilometers per hour on a few major roads, while it was only about 10 kilometers per hour during rush hours in the city center, about the same as riding a bicycle.
Even so, new cars were still selling well. We did not expect so many people would be buying cars these days and we won t have to worry about this year s sales. After all, there are still a lot of people in Shenzhen who need cars, a sales manager with a Dongfeng Honda car dealer told the paper.
Under these circumstances, many people thought the sharp increase in new car sales would soon make Shenzhen implement traffic controls, such as limiting the number of new car plates.
A resident surnamed Zhang had planned to sell his old Santana for 5,000 yuan (US$754), but he decided to wait because he thought Shenzhen would implement similar traffic controls like in Beijing and Shanghai. He thought he could sell his old car plates for 40,000 to 50,000 yuan. Some people in Beijing made a fortune from it and I hope I can also make some use of my old car plates, he said.
However, experts said it was risky to hoard a large number of car plates. Limiting car plates is not the only way to ease traffic congestion and the car plate limit in Shanghai showed that this is not effective in controlling the number of cars on the road, so it would be very risky to hoard car plates in Shenzhen without knowing Shenzhen s plan for traffic control, an unidentified expert told the paper.
(Wang Yuanyuan)
