Ever wondered where the increasing demand for oil was coming from? Just take a look at the roads of Beijing.
The city will have more than four million vehicles on the road this coming weekend according to the municipal traffic management bureau. New vehicle sales in the capital are averaging a 2,000 unit daily pace and the number of cars in Beijing hit 3.99million last Sunday.
According to Gio Jifu, a researcher with the Beijing Municipal Communication Research Centre, the four million mark will break this weekend which will mean that a quarter of the city’s residents have a car. The number of vehicles in Beijing leapt by 10,000 in the last week alone and the number of newly qualified drivers also increased by 12,000 within a week.
The growth of Beijing is simply dramatic – even by comparison to other major metropolises. It took 48 years for the capital to grow from 2,300 vehicles in 1949 to one million in 1997. The second million took just 6.5 years; then the third took three years and nine months. The fourth million has been achieved in a mere two years and seven months.
Vehicle kilometres driven is also high compared to other major cities – the daily average travelling distance is 45km in Beijing compared to 30km in London and 19km in Tokyo.
