The Beijing municipal government's decision to significantly raise car-parking fees in the downtown area since April 1 is a welcome step to prevent the city's traffic conditions from worsening amid the latest binge to buy cars.

That may come as an unhappy surprise to domestic automakers who have just revised their production and sales plans for the year after China's car sales soared by about one-third last year.

But the municipal government should not allow the auto industry's desire to sell cars stand in its way of tackling the city's increasing traffic jams.

With a rapidly expanding auto population that exceeded 4 million by the end of last year, Beijing does not have much wiggle room in traffic control.

On the one hand, private car ownership is increasing dramatically to undermine the city's temporary traffic restriction that roughly bans one-fifth of the population of cars from driving every work-day.

On the other hand, if local residents buy more cars, it will be more difficult for the municipal government to introduce a license control measure to slow the growth of car ownership.

Under such circumstances, any delay to fix the problem will only add to the difficulties of addressing it later.

Fortunately, Beijing has finally come up with a market-based solution.

Charging a higher parking fee to vehicles entering the downtown area is not a novel approach to ease congestions in big cities. Such a policy has proved effective in a number of cities with an even greater car population.

According to Beijing's new rule, parking fees in 13 downtown areas will be doubled or even tripled to discourage drivers from driving there.

In theory, such a policy will get more people out of their cars and into public transportation to help ease congestion in downtown Beijing.

But a higher parking fee is not the magic bullet to all traffic problems that Beijing faces. For instance, for the price incentive to work, the municipal government should ensure enough parking lots are built around the city for drivers to conveniently transfer to public transportation.

Hence, a comprehensive plan is badly needed to promote construction of urban infrastructure for public transport as well as private driving and parking. Otherwise, drivers will complain that they are left with no choice but to pay higher parking fees for traffic conditions that are not improving.

(China Daily 02/03/2010 page8)