Car purchase lottery starts in traffic clogged Beijing

The lottery, which started at 10 a.m. in a meeting room with the Beijing Municipal Commission of Transport (BMCT), was attended by representatives of the applicants, statistics experts and transport officials to ensure the openness, fairness and equity.

A total of 17,600 applicants -- from a total of 210,178 -- were awarded plates at Wednesday's lottery, the first since the Beijing municipal government put in place the scheme at the end of last year.

The new mechanism seeks to reduce new car registrations by allowing only 240,000 this year, about a third of the number registered in 2010.

Data from the BMCT shows the number of cars in Beijing more than quadrupled from 1 million in 1997 to 4.76 million in 2010.

Last year, Beijing saw an annual record of 800,000 new cars take to the already overcrowded streets.

A record 140 traffic jams were monitored on a single evening in September last year, making parts of the city resemble parking lots.

The municipal government has also introduced higher parking fees in downtown areas and stricter enforcement of traffic rules to ease the traffic woes. Kazinform cites Xinhua. See www.xinhuanet.com for full version