Vehicles move slowly on a heavily jammed ring road in Beijing on Friday evening, September 17, 2010. [Photo: Beijing News]

Continual rainfall worsened Beijing's traffic congestion yesterday, further intensifying concerns over the city's already overloaded roads as a result of its expanding population and soaring number of new vehicles, Beijing News reports.

Vehicles got stuck on more than 140 roads late Friday in the city's heaviest road congestion since it adopted a restriction in 2008, forbidding drivers from operating their privately owned cars one workday a week based on their license plate numbers.

The congestion yesterday started to dissipate at about 9 p.m.

The municipal traffic management department said not only the bad weather, but also a higher number of cars than usual on the roads on Friday evening was to blame for the traffic backups.

Beijing's traffic capacity has continued to diminish compared with the uncontrolled growth of its population and the ever growing number of cars on the roadways.