BEIJING, June 30 (Xinhuanet) -- The Chinese capital got 147,000 new cars in the first five months of 2005, increasing the total car population to 2.41 million, Thursday's Beijing Youth Daily reported.

    When cars carrying license plates with the initial "J" started to hit Beijing streets last week, people were just overwhelmed by the sharp increase of the city's sedans.

    The Beijing Traffic Management Bureau said that car license plates are issued with English initials in alphabetical order.

    The debut time between cars initiated with "E" and "F" spanned five years, however, the introduction of "H" cars only took one year, and this time, the "J" series came out a little more than a year than the previous letter.

    Beijing's car number grows at a speed of nearly 2,000 per day, an officer with the traffic bureau said.

    While it took 48 years for the number of vehicles in Beijing toreach one million, it only took six years for it to add another million.

    Earlier this month, the Beijing municipal government issued a transportation development plan, saying that the city would have 5million automobiles by 2020, which means nearly every family wouldhave a car.

    In order to deal with the coming intense traffic, the plan vowsto build more highways and roads, encourages citizens to take buses and subways and recommends constructing more parking lots. Enditem