SHENZHEN plans to introduce carpooling lanes across the city by the end of the year to ease traffic during rush hours, Shenzhen Economic Daily reported yesterday.

    The city’s traffic police are encouraging carpooling during rush hours, after a survey showed up to 80 percent of vehicles on Shenzhen roads are traveling without passengers.

    “Carpooling may be illegal if drivers profit from it,” said Xu Wei, a deputy chief of the city’s traffic police bureau. He said sharing rides other than during rush hour will raise traffic police officers’ attention.

    The city government will set up a real time traffic information platform on which an electronic map will guide drivers off busy roads, as well as establishing a credit system for private vehicles.

    Xu said that the second half of this year will see several new measures adopted, including raising awareness about signal lights and optimizing traffic at 206 crossings, to improve the city’s road traffic.

    Shenzhen has the highest vehicle density nationwide, with around 505 vehicles per kilometer of road. Shenzhen had 3.2 million vehicles by July 20, according to traffic police.

    After the city government started limiting the annual number of new vehicles that could be registered last December, the number of new cars on the road is expected be under 100,000 a year.

    From January to July, there were 124,000 newly registered vehicles in Shenzhen, a decline of 57.63 percent over the same period last year.

    Traffic speeds have shown slight improvement with driving speeds of almost 50 kilometers per hour in July, 2.25 percent faster than last July.

    The city’s traffic police received 56,000 reports of traffic congestion in the past half year, 18.2 percent lower than the first half of last year.

    (Zhang Yang)