Posted on 08/24/2010 10:56:34 AM PDT by Dallas59
Bumper-to-bumper gridlock spanning for 60 miles (100 kilometers) with cars moving little more than a half-mile (one kilometer) a day at one point has improved since this weekend, said Zhang Minghai, director of Zhangjiakou city's Traffic Management Bureau general office.
But he said he wasn't sure when the situation along the Beijing-Zhangjiakou highway would return to normal.
The traffic jam started Aug. 14 on a stretch of the Beijing-Zhangjiakou highway. That section has frequently been congested, especially after large coalfields were discovered in Inner Mongolia, Zhang said. Traffic volume has increased 40 percent every year.
Drivers stranded in the gridlock in the Inner Mongolia region and Hebei province, headed toward Beijing, passed the time sleeping, walking around, or playing cards and chess. Local villagers were doing brisk business selling instant noodles, boxed lunches and snacks, weaving between the parked trucks on bicycles.
The highway construction in Beijing that is restricting inbound traffic flow and causing the jam "will not be finished until Sept. 17," he said.
Authorities were trying to speed up traffic by allowing more trucks to enter Beijing, especially at night, Zhang said. They also asked trucking companies to suspend operations and advised drivers to take alternate routes.
China's roadways are increasingly overburdened as the number of private vehicles booms along with commercial truck traffic hauling materials like coal and food to cities. Traffic slowdowns because of construction and accidents are common, though a 10-day traffic jam is unusual even in China.
The epitome of gridlock.
It could only happen there with all those old chinese drivers.
” Local villagers were doing brisk business selling instant noodles, boxed lunches and snacks, weaving between the parked trucks on bicycles.”
...it’s good to see free enterprise blossoming...and the beauty part is that it’s a fast CASH business...no paperwork!
When you walk through a storm
Hold your head up high
And don’t be afraid of the dark
At the end of the storm
Is a golden sky
And the sweet silver song of the lark
Walk on through the wind
Walk on through the rain
Though your dreams be tossed and blown
Walk on walk on with hope in your heart
And you’ll never walk alone
You’ll never walk alone
When you walk through a storm
Hold your head up high
And don’t be afraid of the dark
At the end of the storm
Is a golden sky
And the sweet silver song of the lark
Walk on through the wind
Walk on through the rain
Though your dreams be tossed and blown
Walk on walk on with hope in your heart
And you’ll never walk alone
You’ll never walk
You’ll never walk
You’ll never walk alone.
Looks like I-95 in my commuter days.
It would get even worse if I was there, when they realized my car wasn’t moving because I blew my head off.
Some parts of I77 & 85 around Charlotte too.
Ah, the legendary efficiency of Maoist communism in action. Are we sure these are the same people who made that really cool shovel?
Somebody needs to put those Disneyland signs out “from this point you are 3 weeks from the city”.
When I was kid growing up in Northern Va, a friend and I once cooked 200 hot dogs, wrap them in foil and put them in white styrofoam coolers. We strapped them to our bikes and sold them at $2 a piece on 95 when it was gridlocked. No condiments, no soda, just hot dogs. We cleared about $360 in 1 hour!
I was just at “South of the Border” 2 weeks ago! “You Never Sausage A Place”.
At least the traffic there moves faster than lines at the US Post Office. I can’t wait for Obamacare to kick in.
Did we unwittingly send them our VDOT engineers? (Virginia)
How they gonna go to the bathroom?
I use to travel up and down I-95 lots. Pedro was my friend.....................
ummmmmmmm....
get some welding torches and slice through the guardrail and send them off the other way
gone in a couple of hours
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