just ordered theregal raptor DAYTONA 350

[Steve_R]

OK glad it worked out for you. Well this confirms what I had been suspecting about the local plate issuing situation. It sounds like it wasn't such a difficult process for you to purchase the plates on the secondary market and then have them transfered to your name. What I'd also be interested in is the re-selling process if and when you decided you wanted to sell the bike off and/or transfer the plate to a car.

I can't help but recall an article in the Shanghai Daily around 2006 when the city first stopped issuing new plates for motorcycles. At that time, they wanted people to mainly give up the gas scooters, as there wasn't much of a disctinction between motorcycle and scooter plates. During that article, they said the validity of the plates was 8 years, and the idea was that the plates would gradually expire and then people would either give up the bikes or trade them in for the almighty car. In theory, all the scooter and bike plates (if they are the same thing) should be out of circulation by the end of 2013 and the city could institute a full-scale ban by following similar steps to what Guangzhou did.

Since I've just realized now that the market for plates is secondary only, I would be hesistant to make such an investment unless I knew that the plates could keep running indefinitely past 2013, say, as long as I paid the yearly insurance fees and had the bike checked for emissions requirements.

What's your take on all this? If the plates don't expire then I totally agree it's a worthwhile liquid investment despite the high initial price

There's also the possibility that Shanghai won't follow Guangzhou's lead and they won't ban bikes like Guangzhou did. Beijing has a good system already in place for the bike plates, and new plates are definitely being registered there. Since Shanghai tends to be innovative and doesn't follow other cities, my overall guess is they would run a lottery system for bike plates like they do for the car plates. The prices would be high of course, maybe not as high as an actual car plate, but it would work as long as people were willing to pay the investment. Also, if there were a way to get newly registered plates, then the city could be more justified in the crackdown against unregistered bikes.

My own take on things is that I agree with the the long-running crackdown on unregistered scooters driven by morons around here, but I only fear it's the lead-up to a total ban in the near future unless things become clearer on the next steps that the city may want to do with the bikes.

As it stands now, I'm more inclined to wait until 2013 or 2014 and see what happens, and hope that the government would take a more positive attitude towards the current bike situation, to see if perhaps it would be more favorable towards bikes in the future.