Scary Statistic: China May Have 1 Billion Drivers.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-05-30/scary-statistic-china-may-have-1-billion-drivers.html

If Beijing’s bumper-to-bumper traffic looks scary now, imagine this: one billion Chinese drivers.

That’s the number of people that Shi Jianhua, deputy secretary-general of the state-backedChina Association of Automobile Manufacturers, forecasts could have driving licenses in the country in the next 10 to 15 years. There were about 280 million last year, according to the Ministry of Public Security.

While having a license doesn’t necessarily lead to owning a car, the estimate is a reminder of the magnitude of the challenges Chinese policy makers face in battling air pollution and traffic congestion. 

China currently has enough roads and related infrastructure to accommodate at most 300 million vehicles, Shi said at a forum in Beijing today. The number of civilian vehicles will rise to 200 million units in 2020 in China, from 127 million last year, according to CAAM.

Cars sit in traffic in the Futian district of Shenzhen, China.

                                              Traffic moves along a road at dusk in Beijing.