CRI听力:Guangzhou Starts Car License Plate Lottery

More than 5,600 applicants were awarded plates on the first day of the lottery.

Zhang Chi, a reporter of the local Guangdong TV says Guangzhou has adopted the same lottery procedure from Beijing.

"During the process, six supervisors randomly drew six numbers, known as seed numbers, which were then put into a pre-designed computer to produce the codes, representing the successful applicants. Applicants can check the results online or by phone after the lottery. Failed applicants qualify automatically for the round."

Only about 190 individuals and offices applied for new-energy vehicle plates when the plate quota for such cars was set at over 1,000.

A local says he will not consider buying an energy-saving or new-energy vehicle.

"Supporting facilities for such vehicles needs to be improved. I would prefer to buy an ordinary car at the moment. If it is easy for me to charge the new-energy vehicle, I will consider buying one."

As China's economy explodes, one consequence has been the skyrocketing amount of traffic.

By the end of 2011, China had more than 100 million automobiles, including some 80 million privately owned vehicles.

Traffic jams in Guangzhou worsened recently, with average speeds during rush hours slowing down to 20 km per hour - the figure expected to further go down.
Growing motor vehicle emissions have also worsened the city's air quality.

With the new initiative, Guangzhou became the fourth city in China to take restrictive measures on new cars.

Xian Weixion is the director of Guangzhou traffic committee.

"The system in Guangzhou is a combination of that adopted in Beijing and Shanghai. Applicants can apply for the license plate auction or lottery. The allocation ratio for them would be one to one. The money collected from the license plate auction would be used for the construction of the city's public transportation."

According to the initiative, half of the new car plates in the city will be given out through auction, a method first introduced by Shanghai to control the number of cars on the streets.

The other 60,000 plates will be allocated through lottery, which has been utilized in Beijing since the beginning of last year to ease the capital city's deteriorating traffic jams.

For CRI, I'm Li Jing.