{"id":29060,"date":"2010-08-25T15:33:22","date_gmt":"2010-08-25T15:33:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thedetroitbureau.com\/?p=29060"},"modified":"2010-08-25T15:33:23","modified_gmt":"2010-08-25T15:33:23","slug":"60-mile-chinese-traffic-jam-now-in-12th-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/2010\/08\/60-mile-chinese-traffic-jam-now-in-12th-day\/","title":{"rendered":"60-Mile Chinese Traffic Jam Now In 12th Day"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A 60-mile tie-up that has frozen traffic onBeijing's G-110 national highway is now in its 12th day.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And you thought your commute was bad?\u00a0 Even traveling the notorious I-405 corridor in Los Angeles is a snap compared to what motorists are facing on the G-110, a limited access highway leading into Beijing, where a monstrous, 60-mile traffic jam is now in its 12th<\/sup> day.<\/p>\n

According to news reports out of the People\u2019s Republic, it has been taking travelers as much as five days to work their way from one end of the snarl to the other, and at this point there appears to be no end in sight \u2013 quite literally.<\/p>\n

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While Chinese traffic has grown steadily worse, in recent years, as more and more of the emerging middle class purchases automobiles, no one seems to have a clear explanation for why G-110 has ground to a complete halt.\u00a0 But the Christian Science Monitor is reporting that the National Highway is overloaded with truck drivers carrying coal for the country\u2019s energy-hungry capital \u2013 much of it illegal.<\/p>\n

Complicating matters, there\u2019s construction around Beijing limiting access to other roadways that might normally be used to divert some of the traffic.<\/p>\n

The situation, according to Chinese reports, could be more the norm than the exception for the next three to four years, until new rail lines that will take coal shipments off the highway are completed.\u00a0 A similar tie-up recently ran on for a full month.<\/p>\n

China depends on coal for up to 70% of its energy \u2013 despite efforts to diversify with such efforts as the Three Rivers hydro-electric project.\u00a0 Complicating matters, the country has belatedly responded to its heavy annual toll of mining accidents, which typically take more than 10,000 lives annually, by closing some of the most dangerous coal mines, in Shangxi Province.<\/p>\n

That means trucks from replacement sources, in Inner Mongolia, must head for Beijing on one of several heavily-traveled routes into the capital.\u00a0 But so do drivers carrying coal from illegal mines.\u00a0 And the G-110 is preferred because of its low tolls and limited coal truck inspection stations.<\/p>\n

China is now the largest automotive market in the world, surpassing the recession-plagued U.S. in 2008.\u00a0 But like the booming economy itself, the demand for new cars is primarily centered in a \u201cfertile crescent\u201d that curves along the country\u2019s Pacific coast.\u00a0 That means massive problems for cities like Beijing and Shanghai.<\/p>\n

Of course, China\u2019s not alone.\u00a0 Western nations have long had to cope with traffic problems.\u00a0 But the shift of wealth to a handful of emerging nations \u2013 often known as the BRIC countries, for Brazil, Russia, India and China \u2013 is happening so quickly, with demand for automobiles booming seemingly overnight, that traffic problems are reaching levels never before seen.<\/p>\n

Moscow has, on the whole, what is considered to be the worst traffic of any city in the world, right now.\u00a0 A recent article in the New Yorker described a scene earlier this year in which patients being transferred to hospitals died in ambulances that were caught up in traffic for hours on end.<\/p>\n

Like Beijing, Russia\u2019s capital is investing massive sums of tax dollars into the effort to keep up.\u00a0 It is working on a third ring road around the city, and looking for ways to beef up mass transit.\u00a0 But even though Russian car sales have been in the doldrums for the last two years, few expect that city\u2019s traffic problems to clear up soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

And you thought your commute was bad? Even traveling the notorious I-405 corridor in Los Angeles is a snap compared to what motorists are facing on the G-110, a limited access highway leading into Beijing, where a monstrous, 60-mile traffic jam is now in its 12th day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29061,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"make":[],"post-state":[],"category_old":[151],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29060"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29060"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29060\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29060"},{"taxonomy":"make","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/make?post=29060"},{"taxonomy":"post-state","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post-state?post=29060"},{"taxonomy":"category_old","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/category_old?post=29060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}