Aug. 24 – Road construction, traffic accidents and breakdowns have created 60 miles of bumper-to-bumper gridlock for the past 10 days along the National Expressway 110, also known as the Beijing-Tibet expressway.
Over the weekend, vehicles were lucky to be moving more than a half-mile a day and the situation likely won’t be resolved until highway construction is finished on September 17, according to Zhang Minghai, director of Zhangjiakou’s Traffic Management Bureau.
Zhang says that authorities are trying to speed up traffic by allowing more trucks to enter Beijing while the government is advising trucking companies to temporary suspend operations and drivers to seek alternate routes.
The Beijing-Tibet expressway has become a vital route for incoming supplies such as coal and food to the approximately 20 million people living in China’s capital. This increase in truck traffic to the city from areas like Inner Mongolia has caused severe damage to roads that many rely on for travel on a regular basis.
While sitting in gridlock for several hours is fairly common in China, a traffic jam this massive and for such an extended period of time is unprecedented. Opportunistic merchants have sprung up from the local towns – pedaling down the highway on bicycles and offering stranded travelers food, water, cigarettes and other essentials at an extremely inflated cost.
This unfortunate situation illustrates a growing problem in China where the number of cars and trucks on the road are increasing much faster than the government’s ability to provide the necessary infrastructure upon which they can drive.
Its a traffic management problem as well as a “too many cars” problem. The habit of leaving cars in the middle of the highway when they’ve had a minor bump, or even a bout of verbal argy-bargy adds much to rush hour woes. The sooner China’s Traffic Police get used to taking photos and moving quickly moving minor accidents to the road sides the better. – Chris
This has just gotta be the absolutely worst traffic jam the world has ever seen
Yup, China wins again. The mother of all TRAFFIC JAMS takes place in China
I am gloating shamelessly. My apologies.
get the %$#* out of here thats nuts
As a former sales-rep, I know that traffic pain. For those expressways they need to add exit ramps to roundabouts & interval roads where drivers can exit.
The answer is not in creating more roads and highways… The Chinese have been very interested in working on a plan to completely reformulate their urban systems to eliminate their dependance on the individual car. They sent 60 delegates last year to take a look at the Lean Linear Artirial City model of Paolo Soleri and the Arcosanti Urban Laboratory in Arizona. High speed national transit and local personal rapid transit systems along side pedestrian speed ways and bicycle lanes will network along high density urban environments. The poisons of cars will not suffice for the new era of conciousness this century and our country has a lesson to learn from this… JA2R
Arcology is the model of urban development for the 21st century and the age of suburban sprawl and the individual car, and its antiquated systems will show its unsustainable realities soon enough. JA2R