Exploration of Sustainable Urban Transportation Development in China through the Forecast of Private Vehicle Ownership

Abstract

With the acceleration of China’s urbanization process, the urban transportation problem has become increasingly serious. The rapid expansion of private vehicle ownership, in particular, has become one of the barriers to the realization of sustainable urban transition. This paper applied the Gompertz model to analyze the non-linear relationship between private vehicle ownership and per capita GDP in China using provincial data. In addition, we forecasted private vehicle ownership for 31 Chinese provinces for the period of 2019–2030 and predicted the time to reach the upper limit of 1000 people vehicle ownership of each province according to different scenarios. The main findings revealed that the number of private vehicles owned in China’s provinces was in line with “S”-shaped development and was currently in the process of accelerated growth. Under the scenario of an annual per capita GDP growth rate of 6%, China’s private vehicle ownership will reach 246 million, 375 million, and 475 million in 2020, 2025, and 2030, respectively. This indicates that China’s expansion of private vehicle ownership will generate significant challenges, such as on-road vehicle-related fossil fuel consumption, pollutant emissions, traffic congestion, and scrapped vehicle recycling. These issues will become increasingly prominent. In provinces such as Hubei, Hebei, Hunan, and other central provinces that have a 50–60% urbanization rate, the large potential for income promotion will significantly stimulate the increase in private vehicle ownership, and the upper limit of 1000 people vehicle ownership in each province will be reached in 2032, 2037, and 2046 with annual per capita GDP growth rates of 8%, 6%, and 4%, respectively.