Nightmarish Nine-Day Traffic Jam: In China, Cars Crawl Along 60-Mile Stretch : The Two-Way : NPR Geez! They could sure use some hybrids there to cut down on the amount of fuel wasted during stop and go along w/the pollution. When I was there, I saw 0 Priuses. Coworkers who've visited said the the pollution there (at least in Beijing) is terrible and I hear about it work sometimes from some Chinese employees. I was there during the Paralympics (the month following the Olympics). IIRC, for the Olympics, the government took many steps to cut down on the pollution for the Olympics by doing things like shutting factories.
Its a snowball effect. Road construction from heavy trucks leaving big rutts in the road caused lane closures. This increaed congestion. This made some of the big trucks overheat and/or breakdown. This caused more delays, more overheating more breakdows, more lane closures, and it continues. The locals are apparently selling water and food at huge markup prices to those stranded. Pollution is bad, and they did shut many factories down prior to the Olympics for months. One of my manufacturers was in the shutdown radius and my projects were delayed for 3 months because of it. But there is nothing they could do...
That one is but not to be outdone Mongolia have got a 60 mile jam now; World's biggest 100km traffic jam, China - AOL Travel UK Funny how it's always 60 miles and not 70 or 80. Still, I wouldn't want to be sat in it!
Traffic is pretty bad in rush hours over there in the big cities. The problems are similar to the problems here: too many big trucks which move slowly and have breakdowns. It's worse there because the big trucks are older than here. Passenger cars, however, are smaller than here because they don't have nearly as many big SUVs and people don't have as much income for cars. SUVs over there are mainly corporate leases. Gas prices are lower there because there is mainly one large govt-run gas station. You don't have oil futures speculation to volatilize gas prices--and now electricity prices-- over here.
Up in L.A. they call that, "rush hour" though there's no rush ... and sayings like that should be no surprise. After all, we say that we park on "driveways" and we drive on "parkways".
