After two years of unsuccessfully participating in the capital's license plate lottery, Zhang Rui has realized that owning a car may not be for her.

Instead, for now, she travels to work using a car pool website as the capital lifted a ban on carpooling earlier this year.

"The city's control on the amount of cars is so strict that I don't know if I'll ever get one - it might be tomorrow or decades later - and sharing a car with someone seems to be my only way out," said the 32-year-old bank clerk from Dongcheng district.