Are People Driving Less?

On March 1, the Central News Agency (CNA) reported that, "oil sales have declined in Taiwan over the past year as more people are using public transportation instead of private vehicles."

Anecdotal evidence suggests this might be true. When I took my car to be serviced a few months back, I was told by a worker at the garage that business there wasn't good, because people are using their cars less, and so the vehicles need servicing less frequently.

People in Taipei and Kaohsiung (which has a new metro system) may well be using public transportation more often than before. Elsewhere, I suspect they're riding scooters rather than driving cars. I doubt any significant number of people have given up gasoline in favor of bicycles...

Anyway, the nitty gritty of the CNA report: According to the central government's Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS), gasoline and diesel sales totaled 13.85 million kiloliters in 2007, down 2.2 percent from the previous year. For January 2008, gasoline and diesel sales decreased 7 percent year-on-year to 1.16 million kiloliters, with gasoline sales dropping 7.9 percent to 819,000 kiloliters and diesel sales losing 4.6 percent to stand at 344,000 kiloliters. As of the end of January 2008, there were 2,606 filling stations around Taiwan, 27 more than 12 months earlier.

DGBAS officials said passenger traffic on Taipei's metro system increased 7.4 percent year-on-year to 36 million people for January 2008, while that of the high-speed railway system rose 68.6 percent year-on-year to two million. During the same month, the number of "small" cars traveling on freeways dropped 1.3 percent year-on-year to 38 million.

By "small" cars I'm assuming they mean private passenger cars. I haven't been able to find the original Chinese article to check this.

There's a related article in the China Post (a Taiwan-based English-language newspaper) here.

In Taiwan, car sales have been falling for two straight years, a fact which many people attribute to a bad economy. In Japan, however, domestic auto sales fell to a 35-year-low in 2007.