A nine-day traffic jam in China is now more than 100 kilometres long and could last for weeks, state media reported Monday. Thousands of trucks en route to Beijing from Huai’an in the southeast have been backed up since Aug. 14, making the National Expressway 100 impassable, Xinhua News reported.
A spokesman for the Beijing Traffic Management Bureau reportedly told China’s Global Times newspaper that the backup was due to “insufficient traffic capacity … caused by maintenance construction.” The construction is scheduled to last until Sept. 13. Stranded drivers appear to have few options when it comes to dealing with the jam.
At least some drivers have complained that roadside vendors have increased their prices to take advantage of the traffic jam. One truck driver said he bought instant noodles from one vendor for four times the original price. Another driver, Wang, told Xinhua he’d been stuck in the traffic jam for three days and two nights. “We are advised to take detours, but I would rather stay here since I will travel more distance and increase my costs,” Wang said. This is not the first time the highway has faced such congestion.
A similar backup in July kept traffic to a crawl for nearly a month, Xinhua reported.
This is insane! What are they doing, passing out Pampers along the way like their trains? I won’t even go to a movie if the line has more than 10 people in it. Sheesh!
I”m not sure exactly what it is, but there is something in this story that just makes no sense to me and I can’t wrap my head around.
How did this thing not hit critical mass long before it got this bad? There must be new traffic entering to keep feeding the jam, why not just block the roads and clear the back up?
I’m sure there really is some major traffic problem, but I’m not convinced it is being reported accurately.
It’s not like the I5 being busy, this is the only truck passable route from an area of the country into Bejing – there isn’t an alternative route.
It’s more the delay you would get if the Panama or Suez canal was closed for a month. Or what happens at airports when fligths to the US stop for a week.
@#2
From the story linked above.
“”We are advised to take detours, but I would rather stay here since I will travel more distance and increase my costs,” Wang said.”
If it really is a traffic jam, once you limit the input the jam clears, then you can let traffic back to it’s normal flow. I don’t think this really a jam, it’s just a bad construction backup.
WOW! It almost makes the traffic in LA or San Francisco look good…
But really? “stuck in traffic for 3 days and two nights!”
I wouldn’t want to be at the front of the line when the traffic cleared!
It would be like a F1 start!!!!
Wow!
In China, nothing is ever what it seems to westerners.
Mmmmmm… jam.
So much for all those high speed railways!
I’ll bet they wished they had High Speed Rail service. Because it’s too short a distance for airlines to cover, cheaply and regularly. But obviously too long for strictly motoring the distance.
I don’t get this.. don’t they have OFFRAMPS people can take and get the hell off the freeway? Are the Chinese just lemmings and pile on into the free way when they had known it’s been jammed for the past week? Are they that stupid? Don’ their phones give them traffic info?
Aren’t they all commies anyway? How could they get cars? No one in Soviet Russia ever had cars (as the 80s stereotype was shown) Does the government provide vehicles?
Plus the image in this post looks like a typical American traffic, if it weren’t for the signs in Chinese.
Honestly I had no idea China was that “westernized” to even have traffic jams, let ALONE highways and passenger cars. It’s almost as if they were a democracy, and had money to spend on cars.
http://cagematch.dvorak.org/index.php/topic,9033.msg39555.html#msg39555
We have the map of the location in cage match..this is outside the major metro area.
FRAGaLOT said,
> Honestly I had no idea China was that
> “westernized” to even have traffic jams,
> let ALONE highways and passenger cars
Wow! It might be time for you to apply for a passport and see a bit of the world. Seems like you’d be shocked by almost everything you’d see.
#10 “Honestly I had no idea China was that “westernized” to even have traffic jams, let ALONE highways and passenger cars. It’s almost as if they were a democracy, and had money to spend on cars.”
China is not democratic , but they are probably the nearest thing to true Capitalists that exit on earth.
The Dalai Lama said not long ago:
“Chinese government is communist-capitalist…
HA-ha-ha-ha!”
At least we know where all those damn Chinese drivers are.
Pave over them all, and improve the quality of drivers worldwide.
Can you imagine all the squawking and yawking going on there? Priceless.
Maybe if the signs were in an actual language, and not based on little pictures……..
Is there a “Rickshaw Only” lane? Just wondering…
What’s not to understand?
The WHOLE DAMN COUNTRY is full of Chinese Drivers….
Blabbo, go ahead, that’s you cue, dumbo.