Nine-day, 62-mile Chinese traffic jam in progress

[golden eagle]

And it's not expected to end until September 13. Wow!

http://www.ajc.com/news/nine-day-traffic-jam-597519.html

[KEK Inc.]

Look at some of those Chinese road signs.  It probably takes motorists 9 years deciphering that clusterf***.

[florida]

Thanks god we buy items 'Made in China' from Wal-Mart!

And major  at the other stories on this Atlanta Journal-Constitution page.

[Scott5114]

I'm guessing that the traffic has been congested for nine days straight, not that it takes nine days to get through, right?

[Chris]

I wonder how this happens. I mean, you don't get a 60 mile queue from simple roadworks. Maybe it's the Chinese way and they narrowed a 5-lane road down to 1 lane.

[iwishiwascanadian]

I saw photos of it and it was a six lane road (three in each direction) just clogged.  I don't get how it's possible.  They said that traffic would move about a kilometre a day. 

[Chris]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_National_Highway_110
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_China_National_Highway_110_traffic_jam

According to Wikipedia it's route G110, which isn't a freeway at all, just a two-lane road parallel to the Jingzhang Expressway (a toll road).

[tdindy88]

According to this news article, the jam seems to have "disappeared."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100825/od_afp/chinaroadtrafficoffbeat

[Brandon]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_National_Highway_110
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_China_National_Highway_110_traffic_jam

According to Wikipedia it's route G110, which isn't a freeway at all, just a two-lane road parallel to the Jingzhang Expressway (a toll road).

Looks like overzealous shunpiking if that's the case.

[US71]

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-News/2010/0826/China-traffic-jam-vanishes-overnight

The China traffic jam that clogged over 60 miles along Beijing-Tibet highway for almost two weeks between Beijing and Hebei province has "vanished,"  according to reports from MSNBC and the French news agency, AFP.

"Virtually overnight, local authorities had managed to disperse the congestion,"  writes Adrienne Mong of MSNBC. "By the time we reached the area, all we encountered were the garden-variety traffic jams here and there."

[vdeane]

Something tells me that someone finally figured out that Chinese drivers are totally stupid and closed the ramps onto the road to stop people from feeding the jam.

[kurumi]

Some analysis from New Geography compares G110 to I-25 in Wyoming: it is a freeway, it parallels an older route* (National Route 110), there's no practical highway alternative other than the two, and there's a lot of coal truck traffic on G110 that, without rail freight, would also bog down I-25.

Also, there are apparently more cars per capita in Beijing than New York City (though that might be the most car-free city in the US).

* inexact comparison, since I-25 and US 87 overlap instead of parallel

[Chris]

coal would be ideal to transport by rail. You need an enormous amount of trucks to haul significant amounts of coal. The best thing may be to replace all those coal-fired plants around Beijing with gas-powered plants or nuclear plants.

[mightyace]

coal would be ideal to transport by rail. You need an enormous amount of trucks to haul significant amounts of coal. The best thing may be to replace all those coal-fired plants around Beijing with gas-powered plants or nuclear plants.

The vast majority of coal shipped in the US is by rail with barge coming in second.

One of the largest coal producing areas in the country is the Powder River Basin in eastern Wyoming.  The rail line there is jointly owned and run by the BNSF and UP railroad companies.  The track to/from the mines in 2-4 tracks wide and see dozens of mile long coal trains each day.  Just imaging what I-25, I-80 and I-90 would be like if you tried to move that via truck!

I'm not going to say never, but coal-fired power generation isn't going away for awhile.  Something like 70% of this country's electricity comes from coal and proven reserves are estimated around 200 years.  Long term we do need to find other ways of generating electricity other than burning something, but that's another discussion.

[KEK Inc.]

If China has this much traffic, those 200 year estimates are going to go down rather quickly.  There's nothing really wrong with nuclear apart from the waste.  It's 10x more efficient than coal-burning plants, and a hell of a lot cleaner.  People all over the political spectrum support it too, but some asshats in the government are too paranoid of another 3-mile or Chernobyl, when both were due to human error. 

[Bickendan]

I wouldn't say 'all over the political spectrum', as it seems that the far left is very much against nuclear, for reasons... no, I'm not going to turn this into a political rant.

[vdeane]

If China has this much traffic, those 200 year estimates are going to go down rather quickly.  There's nothing really wrong with nuclear apart from the waste.  It's 10x more efficient than coal-burning plants, and a hell of a lot cleaner.  People all over the political spectrum support it too, but some asshats in the government are too paranoid of another 3-mile or Chernobyl, when both were due to human error. 

Even the waste isn't much of a problem.  It can be re-processed into fuel (in fact, that's what was supposed to happen, it just turned out to be cheaper to buy more uranium than to re-process waste).  Thorium-based reactors don't even make nuclear waste at all.

[Scott5114]

It's a political issue. Try as you might, you will never be able to convince some people to live near to a nuclear power plant or its associated waste depository. We're road people; we know how NIMBYs work!

It's too bad we don't have a good source of antimatter, guys!

[KEK Inc.]

So build the power plants in the middle of the Gobi Desert...  

In the United States' case, there's plenty of areas in the West that are isolated.  Eastern Washington/Oregon, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, California, etc.  

And I know plenty of hippie tree-hugging liberals who support nuclear.

[Alps]

So build the power plants in the middle of the Gobi Desert... 

In the United States' case, there's plenty of areas in the West that are isolated.  Eastern Washington/Oregon, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, California, etc. 

And I know plenty of hippie tree-hugging liberals who support nuclear.

I do not hug trees and I support nuclear power.

That being said, what does this have to do with Chinese traffic jams?

[Michael in Philly]

So build the power plants in the middle of the Gobi Desert... 

In the United States' case, there's plenty of areas in the West that are isolated.  Eastern Washington/Oregon, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, California, etc. 

And I know plenty of hippie tree-hugging liberals who support nuclear.

I do not hug trees and I support nuclear power.

That being said, what does this have to do with Chinese traffic jams?

But are you a hippie and/or a liberal?  :-)