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![[Image: w-china-traffic-cp-rtr2hfva.jpg]](http://www.cbc.ca/gfx/images/news/photos/2010/08/23/w-china-traffic-cp-rtr2hfva.jpg)
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.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2010/…c-jam.html
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Reblogged this on Oyia Brown.
Reblogged this on World Chaos.
amazing, never heard of such a thing before. this is what you get when you congest people into high density cities and don’t allow people to spread out (some call this suburban sprawl and hate it, frankly I see nothing wrong with it if done responsibliy
This is what happens when you build around cars and not public mass transit systems rather than population density.
actually what I was driving at was if people were spread out more and there were more roads and if everyone didnt work in the same areas, around here they built more roads and it reduced the congestion we used to get, , mass transit cant survive without subsides from teh gov because it is not what people want, you cant force a market on someone who doesn’t want it and expect people to be happy about it. if people wanted mass transit they would buy into it, but they don’t people like indpendence, freedom to go when they want when tehy want and be able to take their stuff and their doggies with them it saves time too.imagine trying to carry all your stuff, a child etc on a bus or train, not very convenient and having to wait long time between position a to position b. I remember when I used to use the bus it was very time consuming and if the bus breaks down while it is freezing out and your waiting for it very bad, not to mention no privacy and creeps can hassle you too. and no way will they let you take your dogs with you either.
And roads are built and maintained without government money? You could fund the mass transit simply by rezoning the enormous amounts of expensive land (currently producing zero income) to commercial and residential buildings. Car-based traffic systems are ridiculously expensive to maintain in big cities. Especially the space required to build roads, parking etc. consumes something something like 50% of land area in a city like the L.A., and you still have traffic jams whereas in mass transit based cities it’s more like 10% of the land area.
you would be surprised how many people hate the cities anyway and wish they could live outside and still have a decent job without driving for hours every day. some do like the city I am not disputing it but in a true free market which we do not have most would choose the suburbs or country side, in a free market the consumer would decide where jobs are located not gov or corporations looking for subsides, gov has intervened in the market for so long people do not know any other way except to keep giving it more and more of thier rights property freedoms and obedience. the more open spaced areas like suburbs are not subsided by the feds and yet it is getting more and more why? because that is people want people vote with their wallets and feet if allowed to do so. if mass transit was what people wanted then it would happen without gov force. don’t you hate to be forced to do something you don’t want? do you feel others liek to be forced by economics or regulation or taxation to go one way or another against their will? in china I heard they are literally rounding up farmers nad forcing them into the cities, (I was wondering why they were building those big empty cities) not because it is for their welfare but because populations of slaves are easier to control and corral and work cheaply thne if spread out, you know nimrod who was a enemy of God had the same idea he wanted to be king, to be a king you have to have obedient subjects and you cant have that if they are spread out, and independant, so the cities we have today many of them were probably forced into play by controling where corp set up shop to force people into cities (new york has like 8 million people yikes!)go where the jobs are not where the people are type thing. big shots have always used gov to get control over populations for their own glory and enrichment, and by the way the gov has no money they only have what they take from others. all money is borrowed into existance and give out on loans, and gov either takes money by taxation or borrows against us where we have to pay it via taxations and other forms of redistribution of wealth to the wealthy classes. so it si our money not theirs. they are the servant but act the master.
The thing is to build human-friendly cities by closed blocks with green courtyards.
This is a 20-laned highway. Do you think this is built without governmental subsidies? Mind you, this jam is happening in Communist China.
A 20-laned highway equals a train service capable to carry at least 20,000 passengers per hour, ie. a typical, comfortable commuter train service using three connected, 75 metres long EMUs (carrying a total of 800 sitting passengers and 200 standing passengers), with a headway of three minutes into both directions. That train would be luxurious on Chinese standards with most passengers sitting and only every fifth passenger standing.
A bit different than your case with you freezing a tthe bus stop and waiting for eons. Speaking of independence, freedom and time saving, note that these Chinese people are not very independent or free even if we only speak about traffic: they are stuck together with their automobiles on a (incomprehendably wide) line of asphalt for weeks! Not very convenient and having to wait long time between position A to position B.
A two-tracked railway with max speed of 200-300 km/h (160-200 mph) costs around 5 million euros per km / 10 million dollars per mile to build. Ie. a 100 km railroad costs around 500 million euros or 658 million dollars.
I’m asking you: how much does a 20-laned highway cost per km/mile?
And another one: how much does it cost to build Usonian infrastructure with a tenfold of needed road network compared to dense, urban environment? I live in an Arctic country with a population density of 16 pop. / km2 (= 41 pop. / sq mi) and a GNP of $46,098 per capita. And even we can’t really afford our road network of 104,161 kilometres or 64,723 miles but we’ve had to privatize a part of our most rural highways to local landowner’s road cooperatives due to budget deficit.
I don’t put any credence or credit to china that place is a nightmare mess and If I lived there I would probably kill myself, those people are in a serious prison there and ruled by governments who are not interested in their welfare but in getting more money and power. why by tell are they building 20 lane highways anyway are they stupid or something? I heard they were forcing farmers nad others into the cities, talk about nazi germany on steroids of tyranny.
Don’t believe the hype. In many ways china is freer than the west, and if you actually visited would probably find, food aside, that its much more like Wild West America than you think. Plus the people are for the most part incredibly courteous, well mannered, optimistic and friendly,
There are still many, many problems, but those are the result of extreme poverty than repression. The state is still a problem, but it’s not the hellhole of tyranny you are lead to believe.
China already had a huge rail network which is being massively expanded, and trains already run a lot closer to each other than you would find in the west. They have a huge networks of goods trains which are the longest moving things I have ever seen in my life. Besides the problem here seems to come from road haulage rather than passenger drivers. It is not as if the government is not giving people a choice to live in the countryside in fact the opposite, they take draconian steps to stop people moving to cities. The problem stems from the fact there are 1.3Bn people in what is actually a relatively small space as most of the country is dry, arid and not inhabitable. Ontop of this they are worlds largest manufacturer and shift a lot of goods to their ports.
Actually London (and paris) manages just such feat. Relatively few people own cars in London and Paris who live in the city because the mass transit system is greatly used. The system is much maligned, but this is in a city where waiting 3 minutes between each stop is considered an age. Despite this, the system, as antiquated and sometimes unpleasant though it is due to lack of adequate investment, is very successful.
Bejiing alone has over 20 million people. Paris has 2.2M and London 8M. How can you even compare such figures? Of course “relatively few people” own cars. Basically China has (in urban area) 76,200 people per square mile, versus UK which has 10,600.
Reblogged this on euzicasa and commented:
future in a jam, Hopes in a jar: Way to live!
Jeeze! And I thought traffic was bad where I live!!
Reblogged this on 7 Years in Hong Kong.
Reblogged this on pundit from another planet.
I shall never complain about traffic again
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Imagine if you were in that traffic jam and you had to poop urgently !
Imagine If someone overtook you on that highway
This is 24 lanes of traffic. If building more roads solved congestion this ought to have proved that plan. Fortunately China has a large, powerful rail network and robust public transit, much of it operating at over 100 miles per hour. This is mostly trucks. Most people there take transit because it is faster. This country has well over a billion people and couldn’t deploy American style suburban development without destroying much of it’s functional crop land, which is already under extreme stress. Further a lot of Western China is hot and dry and has little population.
Sooner or later, India is going to experience similar jams
As proven in Braess’s paradox… less lanes = less congestion. Its a complex theory with a number of reasons as to why this happens. A number of cities have reduced congestion by removing highways and congested roads;
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In Seoul, South Korea, a speeding-up in traffic around the city was seen when a motorway was removed as part of the Cheonggyecheon restoration project.[2]
In Stuttgart, Germany after investments into the road network in 1969, the traffic situation did not improve until a section of newly-built road was closed for traffic again.[3]
In 1990 the closing of 42nd street in New York City reduced the amount of congestion in the area.[4]
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Courtesy of Wikipedia – Braess’s paradox
I know it sounds backwards but it does work (I studied the theory and real life examples at University)… and not just in traffic but in electrical systems too.
Unfortunately no- one told the people who planned this epic 20 lane monstrosity.