Drivers get online to find parking spaces in Beijing
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Finding it hard to get a parking space in crammed Beijing? Get online to try your luck with a new website.
Netizens Tuesday started trialing a website for exchanging Beijing car park information.
The Chinese capital has 4.76 million cars and limited parking space.
Drivers can log onto www.nestca.com to request a parking space for a certain time and at a certain place, or browse information on parking slots for rent.
Qi Jianzong, head of a residential community office in Chaoyang District, runs the website.
Qi said officials came up with the idea of the website to utilize the parking resources in Beijing and help car park owners earn extra income.
"We find that many car park slots in residential areas are free during the day while slots in and around office buildings are basically vacant at night," Qi said.
"We encourage businesses and organizations to rent car park slots to night-time users who live in nearby communities."
It remains to be seen if the website will be successful. It attracted just a few visitors Tuesday.
Beijing traffic is notorious. The number of private cars in the city has skyrocketed in the past few years as the nation's middle class has grown.
Authorities were forced to cut new car registrations by two-thirds for 2011 compared with 2010. They also introduced a lottery scheme for car buyers to receive license plates.
Data from the Beijing Municipal Commission of Transport shows that the number of cars in Beijing more than quadrupled from 1 million in 1997 to 4.76 million in 2010.
The designers of most of Beijing's old residential and business districts could not have envisaged the current car-ownership boom.
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