Home » Metro » Public Services
Now, you can choose your lucky car plate
Print Edition
YOU can now choose your next car plate from 20 options instead of the old six, officials announced yesterday.
Shanghai is a trial city in a system that will go nationwide if it proves successful. If adopted, the new system will be available online and on-site.
The trial is currently only available on-site after the online option was close for tweaking, police said. It will be back online at the start of December.
Previously, car owners could also choose on-site or online but those who wanted to pick their plate numbers on-site had to go to branches of the vehicle administration to choose a plate from six options. Each branch had only a random pool of 1,000 numbers.
Now, the choice has expanded and branches have been integrated and there is a choice from 50,000 numbers and client can choose from a batch of 20.
But car owners cannot switch between batches and a number will be automatically selected if the user does not make a choice within 180 seconds.
“The 180 seconds is enough for me,” a car owner, surnamed Yin, told Shanghai Daily. Yin successfully bid for a car plate in September.
He picked a car plate number containing an eight yesterday, and the plate was produced in less than 30 minutes.
“It would be better if I could get a car plate number with three eights,” he said with a laugh.
Eight and six are considered by many lucky numbers. But the number four, which sounds like death in Mandarin, is usually avoided.
An officer with the registration authority, Lu Qiang, said the number four has been filtered out of the pool.
The options are only for private Shanghai plates and must be three letters, followed by three Arabic numerals.
Demand for Shanghai plates is rocketing. The number of privately registered vehicles grew almost 15 percent last year over 2014, government officials say.
As vehicle numbers grow, the city is further tightening the number of car plates it will issue.
Authorities are also expanding public transport options, adding bus-only lanes and cutting waiting times on the Metro.
And 500 kilometers will be added to the city’s road network by 2020.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
