Voices

Rentals to ease gridlock

By Earle Gale (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-05-24 07:59

I've lauded the city's excellent and thoroughly affordable public transit system.

And I've waxed lyrical about the joys of cycling through the capital's streets - that is, when cars are not blocking the bike lanes.

Readers could be forgiven for thinking I am a car-hater.

So, it might come as a surprise to those of you who have read my stream of consciousness regularly (I know my mother, for one, always does) to learn that I'm really looking forward to getting behind the wheel.

Have no fear; I'm not planning to buy a car and add to the 4.17-million autos that choke our streets.

I will not trade in my subway card. Nor will I put my bike into storage.

But, after not having been in control of a car for more than a year, I like the idea of a bit of a road trip.

My juices started flowing last week when I read a METRO story about how a dozen Beijing subway stations are about to team up with a car rental agency to offer subway riders the chance to hire a car through a new, no-hassle arrangement.

Apparently, the rental company will open booths at several subway stations along seven lines by the end of the month.

The company claims it will be as easy as checking into a hotel to get yourself a car for the day - all people will need is some ID, a driving license and to swipe their credit card.

I started imagining, as I read the story, how lovely it would be to ride out to the burbs on the subway and hire myself a car so I can head on out into the countryside with my girlfriend and a picnic hamper. It's something I've been thinking of doing for a while. Up to now, I had been thinking of doing it with the help of a taxi or even an unlicensed taxi.                  

I never quite got around to doing it because the romantic day out I had imagined away from the confines of the hot city never seemed quite as interesting when I thought about the taxi driver who would have to be with us for the whole day, playing gooseberry.

I expect the new car rental booths will mainly appeal to people like me. People who might want to drive every now and then to places they cannot get to by subway or bus.

I wonder how many of those casual, occasional, drivers have, in the past, bought cars to give them that little bit of freedom they were craving.

How many people, for example, who occasionally met important friends and business acquaintances at the airport bought a car so they could have face.

How many with cottages in the countryside bought cars just to make their weekend journeys.

And I wonder how many of those initially occasional users ended up driving their cars more and more frequently until they were jumping behind the wheel every time they wanted to go to the corner shop to buy a packet of cigarettes.

Quite a few, I wager. Which is why I'm looking at the introduction of the car rental booths and the fleet of 600 new cars as a good thing.

True, the city and it's surrounding countryside will have to endure 600 more, mainly inexperienced, drivers on the roads each day.

But I think the service will assuage the needs of tens of thousands of occasional drivers in our city; giving them an opportunity to get behind the wheel of an automobile every once in a while but making sure they don't end up joining the stampede to go out and buy a car of their own.

We have 2,000 new car owners in our city each day and we should be doing everything we can to persuade as many people as possible to resist the temptation to join them.