China's nine-day traffic jam stretches 100km

[onehandle]

Source: AFP

BEIJING (AFP) – Thousands of vehicles were bogged down Monday in a more than 100-kilometre (62-mile) traffic jam leading to Beijing that has lasted nine days and highlights China's growing road congestion woes.

The Beijing-Tibet expressway slowed to a crawl on August 14 due to a spike in traffic by cargo-bearing heavy trucks heading to the capital, and compounded by road maintenance work that began five days later, the Global Times said.

The state-run newspaper said the jam between Beijing and Jining city had given birth to a mini-economy with local merchants capitalising on the stranded drivers' predicament by selling them water and food at inflated prices.

That stretch of highway linking Beijing with the northern province of Hebei and the Inner Mongolia region has become increasingly prone to massive jams as the capital of more than 20 million people sucks in huge shipments of goods.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100823/sc_afp/chinaroadtraffic

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Sometimes I don't think China will someday run the world, but then I remember that they will.

[Wednesdays]

1. "...selling them water and food at inflated prices..."

Damn commies.

:think:

[ensho]

2. I can see novels, poems, movies, plays, videos, etc. coming

from the longest, in more ways then one, traffic jam.

[slackmaster]

3. Sounds like an expanded version of Jean-Luc Godard's film "Weekend" (1967)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPrQHdIF_l8

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062480/

From IMDB's synopsis:

A supposedly idyllic weekend trip to the countryside turns into a never-ending nightmare of traffic jams, revolution, cannibalism and murder as French bourgeois society starts to collapse under the weight of its own consumer preoccupations

[Prometheus Bound]

4. Vehicles are moving as little as one kilometre a day! Drivers stuck for 5 days!

China's 100-km traffic jam now in its 10th day, could last 24 more

<snip>
Bumper-to-bumper gridlock – with vehicles moving little more than a one kilometre a day at one point – has improved since last weekend, said Zhang Minghai, director of Zhangjiakou city's Traffic Management Bureau general office.

Some drivers have been stuck in the jam for five days, ....

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/851641--china-s-100-km-traffic-jam-now-in-its-10th-day-could-last-24-more