Beijing ponders parking space rule for new car purchase

Beijing traffic authority is considering adopting a new car purchasing policy Tuesday that will require residents to show a parking space certificate first, but experts said Wednesday they believe the policy will not last long due to the city's insufficient parking spaces.

Pan Bo, the director of the parking facility administration department at the Transportation Administration of Beijing Municipal Commission of Transport, said that adopting the policy is a "development tendency in the future," the Beijing Daily reported Wednesday.

This policy was previously introduced in 1998, but the government canceled it in August 2003 after admitting it failed to restrict the numbers of vehicles in the city, magazine Auto Business reported in July.

Meng Bin, a professor in city planning at Beijing Union University, agrees the policy will not be long-lasting.

"In a city where most old residential compounds have no parking lots and parking space at newly-built compounds is far from enough to cover all the residents, the policy means nothing," Meng said.

He suggested government should build more parking spaces and also work out other supplementary measures to restrict the increasing vehicle numbers in the capital.

There are only 741,090 parking spaces available as of now for the city's 5 million vehicles, according to the Beijing News.　

Residents have mixed opinions toward the suggested policy.

About 56 percent of the 3,000 Web users who joined a poll conducted by the Xinhua News Agency had objected to its introduction as of Wednesday evening.