China’s 50-Lane Traffic Jam Is Every Commuter’s Worst Nightmare
What happens when a checkpoint merges fifty lanes down to 20.
Traffic after the holidays tend to be pretty awful. But China may have just turned every driver’s worst nightmare into reality as hundreds of millions of people headed home at the end of a Golden Week, a week-long national holiday.
Thousands of motorists found themselves stranded on Tuesday in what looks from above like a 50-lane parking lot on the G4 Beijing-Hong Kong-Macau Expressway, one of the country’s busiest roads. Some are dubbing the traffic jam a “carpocalypse,” while others are calling it “carmageddon.”
Tho’ foggy weather may have played a role, the real culprit is a fresh checkpoint that coerces traffic to merge from fifty lanes down to just 20, according to The People’s Daily. Traffic was reportedly backed up for hours.
It’s the "high wait". Drone footage shows a 10km-long line of cars returning to Beijing after the Chinese Fresh Year holiday.
Posted by Trending in China on Thursday, February 26, two thousand fifteen
China is no stranger to these ridiculous traffic jams, especially on national highways. In 2010, gridlock spanning more than seventy four miles on the spread inbetween the Inward Mongolia Autonomous Region and Beijing left drivers with nowhere to go for a staggering twelve days. That time blame fell on everything from road construction to cracked down cars and fender-benders.
People played cards to pass the time while nearby vendors took the chance to sell food and water at premium prices. “If you said ‘no’ or complained about the price they menace to break your [wind]shields,” one driver told the Internal Mongolia Morning Post.
In 2012, the government’s decision to grant free road travel during the same national holiday turned twenty four motorways in sixteen provinces into a massive parking lot with more than eighty five million people stuck in their cars.
About the Author
Linda Poon
Linda Poon is an assistant editor at CityLab covering science and urban technology, including brainy cities and climate switch. She previously covered global health and development for NPR’s Goats and Soda blog.
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