Heavy congestion on Wangjing Bridge in Beijing's north fourth ring road on June 14, 2016. [Photo: the Beijing Times]

Beijing is turning to economic and technological measures to relieve the pressure of heavy traffic, reported the Beijing Times on Tuesday. By 2020 there will be another 300,000 vehicles in Beijing, that's a total of 6.3 million.

Zhou Zhengyu, director of Beijing Municipal Transportation Commission, said the gap between traffic supply and demand is the greatest concern for Beijing. Despite a relatively slow increase rate, there are still more vehicles on the road each year.

To reduce vehicle emissions, Beijing wants to control the amount of cars on the road to under 6 million by 2017.

Each year a different energy quota is announced in Beijing. This year, 150,000 households are able to buy a new car. Households wishing to own a car, must apply every couple of months to enter the 'car lottery,' or the chance to own a car in Beijing. This lottery is divided into two categories, a quota of regular cars running on petrol or gas, and new energy cars, such as electric cars -- 90,000 and 60,000 respectively.

Already this year, the quota for new energy vehicles has been used up and the opportunity to buy such a car has fallen below 0.14%. So only one person out of 733 wanting to buy a car in Beijing will be able to 'win' the 'car lottery'.

Between 2018 to 2020, the total amount of vehicles will increase to around 300,000 more, the quota for every year is only 100,000. Buying a car in Beijing will become more and more difficult from 2018.

This is a measure implemented to continue relieving the pressure of heavy traffic in Beijing.

People wanting to buy electric vehicles face the challenge and inconvenience of recharging the car. To combat this, Zhou Zhengyu announced that 20 gas stations of PetroChina have installed recharging facilities for such vehicles.

In the meantime, public transport such as buses and taxis will also move to new energy. In 2017, it is estimated that pollution can be reduced by 25% in comparison to 2012.