China needs own style in addressing city-car dilemma

With help from his parents, Li Xuejun, a high school teacher in Changchun, capital city of northeast China' s Jilin Province, bought his first car after graduating from college in 2008, but this has brought him more trouble than enjoyment.

Rush-hour horrors on the road and difficulty finding a parking place has always been a major problem for Li, as it has been for the other tens of millions of car owners in China, the world's fastest-growing car market that surged nearly 48 percent in the first half of 2010.

"To avoid traffic jams I leave home for the office at 6 a.m.," two hours before work begins at 8, said Li, who lives in a suburban community where it takes more than one hour to reach his downtown work place.

"And when I finish work each day at 5 p.m., I usually choose to stay in the office one hour longer so I can miss the congestion," Li said.

On a typical Monday afternoon at the East Chaoyang Street in Changchun, among China's second-tier cities, cars are crawling at a snail's pace as drivers are blasting their horns in a sign of their growing impatience.

In China's capital city, Beijing, where the number of vehicles exceeded 4 million as of November last year, cars are not traveling at a comfortable speed, even on the wide 10-lane Changan Avenue.


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