Beijing Controls Car Purchases To Tame Traffic

The city of Beijing plans to issue only 20,000 car registrations per month (that’s still a whopping 240,000 new cars annually) over the next year in order to control traffic. China is the world’s hottest automobile market these days, and the restrictions, which went into place on December 24, have had the unintended effect of driving up car sales in the final month of 2010. According to China Car Times, over 50,000 new cars were sold in the first two weeks of December in response to coming cuts. That won’t help traffic, among the world’s worst.