China Car Sales Could Surpass US’ Highest Figure in 2010

Beijing experienced some of the worst traffic jams in the city's history just before the holidays, and it seems the congestion isn’t about to get any better. According to today’s Global Times, “China's domestic auto sales could hit 17 million units this year, equal the highest annual level ever reached in the United States.”

Apparently that’s an increase of 25 percent over 2009, bringing China’s vehicle fleet to 199 million. Beijing’s car fleet alone is increasing by an average of 1,900 cars a day, a rate of growth that will reach 15 million vehicles by 2015.

A nation-wide survey of conducted by China Youth Daily last month found that, “60.2 percent said they were planning to buy a car in the next five years, while 16 percent already had one. Only 21.1 percent had ruled out buying a car.”

Chronic overcrowding on Beijing’s public transport system is doing nothing to discourage new car purchases. Although Beijing authorities have been constructing new subway lines at a rate of knots for the past few years – the Fangshan Line is due to open in late 2010 – the expansion of public transport is still failing to keep up with the city’s population growth, which officially reached 19.72 million earlier this year.

Another report in today’s Global Times illustrates the strain the city’s growth is placing on infrastructure. For the past year escalators in the transfer tunnels at Xizhimen between Line 13 and lines 2 and 4 have been out of operation due to fears that “crowds would overwhelm escalator capacity and create potential danger.” The report quotes a Beijing service hotline operator as saying, “It was not anticipated [when the escalators were installed] that we would have so many passengers now."