Traffic jam in China. Ways of the Celestial Empire. How roads are built in China. World records. The biggest traffic jam in the world
Many people would like to travel back to ancient times, because it seems that life was much simpler then. Clean air, fewer people, and most importantly - no traffic jams! You will be surprised, but the first traffic jams appeared in ancient times. Where did it all start and where was the biggest traffic jam in the world recorded?
History of traffic jams
The great and powerful Roman Empire was actively developing its political and trade relations, and roads would be very useful for this. Back in the 5th century, the Romans had special rules and regulations for road construction. At that time, it was the Roman Empire that had the densest network of roads, which were divided depending on the means of transportation along them. Thus, there were separate roads for horses and chariots.
Under Emperor Caesar, traffic rules first appeared, but, despite the excellent transport organization, the first traffic jams also appeared in Ancient Rome. After the collapse of the Empire, movement in its territories was no longer so violent.
In the 17th century, with the growth of cities and a clear increase in the number of people, the phenomenon of traffic jams occurred again. Carriages, moving along small European streets, often could not pass safely. There were too many of them, which made movement much more difficult.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the construction of subways briefly helped solve the problem of traffic congestion, taking on part of the passenger flow. However, traffic jams soon returned and are still an unpleasant part of many city residents.
World records. The biggest traffic jam in the world
People living in big cities are bound to encounter traffic congestion. They represent a concentration of vehicles on a separate section of the road. At the same time, cars move much slower than expected, or do not move at all. The severity of traffic jams is measured by kilometers of vehicle traffic, or time spent in a traffic jam.
The first largest traffic jam in the world was recorded in the USA, in the state of Washington. Then, in 1969, a huge number of people rushed to the Woodstock festival, creating a traffic jam 20 miles long.
For residents of Brazil, the traffic jam in Washington would seem like flowers. In 2008, the longest traffic jam in history was recorded in the Brazilian city of Sao Paolo. The length of the traffic jam was 292 kilometers.
The country that undoubtedly breaks all records for the number of vehicles and has the largest traffic jam in the world is China. This traffic jam should rather be called the longest, since the drivers spent about ten days in it. In 2010, the Beijing-Tibet route seemed to freeze. There were many reasons for this: accidents, traffic overload, road repair work. Enterprising traders even organized food trucks.
Fighting traffic jams
Road congestion with trucks and vehicles is growing. China's largest traffic jam in the world is irrefutable proof of this. Many countries have already begun to address these problems. For example, in Italy, the center of Rome is prohibited from visiting the center of Rome by car to anyone except those living in the area.
Residents of Beijing cannot use their own car every day. For each driver there is a separate day in the week when he can use the car, depending on the last digit of the number. On Monday, for example, only those whose numbers end in 1 and 5, etc. can travel.
Conclusion
Perhaps using a car is very convenient and much more pleasant than crowding with strangers on the subway. However, the fact that traffic jams create even more inconvenience and take up much more time cannot be denied. Both the largest traffic jam in the world, which occurred in Brazil, and the longest in China, only confirm that the time has come for people to change something.
Almost every large, densely populated city suffers from traffic jams. The largest congestion occurs in megacities such as Bangkok, Beijing, Sao Paulo, Los Angeles and Washington. There, people often have to set aside several hours a day just to move around. Even the average small-town American spends nearly an entire workweek a year stuck in traffic. Because roads are heavily congested, even minor disruptions on the roadway can lead to huge traffic jams. This is exactly what happened in 2010, when road work in Beijing caused a 12-day, 100-kilometer traffic jam.
This mega-traffic jam stretches along China National Highway 110. Ironically, it was caused by road work aimed at combating congestion. Yet Beijing's congested streets couldn't handle even that. Large maintenance trucks and the road work itself quickly brought traffic to a standstill. To make matters worse, the cars overheated greatly. All this forced motorists to stand on the road for days...
Of course, no matter how difficult the situation, there will always be those who will find a way to profit from it. Taking advantage of the opportunity, vendors offered instant noodles, other food items, water and cigarettes to stranded drivers at prices 10 times higher than normal. Those who refused to buy were sometimes threatened with damaging the car. There were many cases when money was stolen from cars and gas was siphoned off. However, everything was relatively calm as 400 police were called to patrol the roads.
The traffic jam dragged on for almost two weeks. The cars moved extremely slowly - 3 km per day. People in cars played cards, chess, or simply dozed. While most of us would never willingly stand in such a traffic jam, some truckers deliberately drove along this busy route (even though they could have avoided it). They wanted to spend as much time as possible on the road so they could then raise prices. Obviously, this did not help the situation.
Surprisingly, the plug disappeared on the 12th day. This turned out to be less than some officials had predicted. Apparently, local authorities overnight dispersed the congestion of cars, and they began to move at normal speed.
By the way, although Beijing had the longest traffic jam, the record for the longest traffic jam (in terms of distance) belongs to the Brazilian city of Sao Paulo. There are regularly traffic jams up to 295 kilometers long!
Foreigners are not allowed to drive in China. But if you really want to, you can do it illegally.
My friend and I traveled around the Middle Kingdom by car and drove 13 thousand kilometers.
I want to show how roads in China are built and why they will soon overtake America.
1 Five years ago I was traveling around the USA. It was a huge two-month route, I drove 20 thousand kilometers alone, from Detroit to Detroit. I spent long hours behind the wheel, studying the structure of roads, exits, highway numbering and monitoring the behavior of drivers.
Then there was a big report. It seemed to me that the States have the best roads in the world, but how else could it be in a country with such distances?
2 In China they are even larger. Well, what about the roads? If in the USA they are glorified in films and music, the legendary Route 66 alone is worth something, but in China it remains a mystery even for most tourists coming to the country. This is what I will say - they have not just caught up, but have already surpassed America and the rest of the world. Where others cut tunnels in the rocks, the Chinese install piles. Tens and hundreds of kilometers of roads on concrete pillars. Sometimes the trails run right along the river bed.
3 China is a country of advanced development. Have you seen their ghost towns? I myself am talking about how entire million-plus cities stand empty, waiting for residents who may arrive in ten years. But the Chinese are doing it now because they can now, and then it is unknown. It's the same with roads. This photo was taken in the foothills of Tibet, where there are a couple of hundred inhabitants in two villages, and they ride donkeys. But the road was built, also with lamps and a wide sidewalk!
4 The most complex interchanges, grandiose engineering structures, all this leads to delight!
5 We traveled for almost a month. Every day we spent six to twelve hours driving. And there were excellent highways almost everywhere. And where there were none, they were built there at that very moment. Large-scale road construction has begun in the most remote areas. Nobody knows about this, writes or talks about it, because it is inaccessible to foreigners.
6 To drive legally in China, you need to obtain a local license and have a local registration in order to pass the test for this license. A tourist will never rent a car. A year ago, I received a letter from a man named Valikhan: he said that he was reading my blog, and in the notes about Japan he saw how I mentioned my dream - to drive a car through the wilds of China. It turns out that Valikhan had such a dream, with the only difference being that he has been living in Beijing for ten years, has a license and a car, and of course speaks Chinese fluently.
7 Need I say that I caught fire? We began to communicate, come up with a route, and a month later he was already meeting me at the Beijing airport. Everything was ready for the trip, and straight from the airport parking lot we went to Inner Mongolia, a ten-hour journey.
8 Then there were many stories about China, you can read them and buy my book "". Now I will continue the story about the roads.
9 If the roads are ALREADY good, then the drivers are STILL not so good. Few, very few Chinese travel long distances on their own, for this they have high-speed trains and planes, this is also well developed among them. The main transport on highways is trucks. And truck drivers are special people.
10 They have their own concepts about traffic rules and a kind of driver ethics. For example, it is indecent to overtake a colleague and change back to the right lane, so you need to drive in the left lane, at the same speed, and wait until the other driver begins to slow down, as if politely giving way. Cars in the back? God, what nonsense!
11 Road workers also have their own kind of humor.
12 The most interesting China is where there is no asphalt or highways. There are fewer and fewer places like this.
13 This is the exception rather than the rule.
14 When they pave a road, they do it well and with a plan for the future. High-quality asphalt and streetlights even in remote areas. The correct philosophy is that it is better to do it now than not to do it later.
15 Sometimes this approach looks comical. In Russia I saw exactly the opposite picture, there was a road, bam - and no.
16 Each province of the country has its own traffic rules. There can be a lot of differences, starting from the speed limit. Each lane can also have its own speed.
17 It happens that everything is the same, cars 120 with a minimum of 60, buses and trucks - no more than 90.
18 It happens that the left lane is used only for overtaking; you cannot drive on it. But often the opposite is true, for example, only cars stay in the left lane, only trucks stay in the right lane. Or even more sophisticated: everyone rides on the left, but faster, and everyone on the right, too, but slower. And if you are driving on an empty road in the right lane 120, the police can stop you: violated!
19 Of course, the road infrastructure and its design are different.
20 Traffic lights, intersections, even signs can be different.
21 In America there are also differences between states, but not so great.
22 Is it difficult to travel around China without understanding hieroglyphs? A considerable part of the signs are generally duplicated in English.
23 At the same time, English translations are also found.
24 You will still be driving using navigators, so you won’t get lost.
25 In addition to ordinary road signs, there is “social propaganda” on the roadsides, where people are urged not to drive when tired.
26 Or they explain that arguing with your wife while driving can cause an accident.
27 But traveling around China without speaking Chinese is almost impossible; you won’t be able to communicate even with hotel staff, not to mention finding the right hotel: to accommodate foreigners you need a separate license, many don’t have one. Google and Booking are no help in the outback; you need to use local software. At the same time, if anyone is interested, Valikhan and I are thinking about doing a tour for a small group next year. For a China that no one else will show.
28 Do you like Chinese roads? Good ones, right? There is one caveat - almost all highways are toll roads. Moreover, they are seriously paid, the cost of traveling on them is slightly less than the cost of gasoline that you spend on the road.
29 The payment points are beautiful and not similar to each other.
30 Regional characteristics matter. In Mongolia these will be yurts, in Tibet stupas, and in the city of Chengdu, where the largest panda nursery in the country - you understand.
31 Police. There is little of it on the roads. Law enforcement officers appear only if something has happened.
32 But their mobile posts are located near every toll point on the highways.
33 And here it is important not to get caught. Cars are stopped selectively, just to check documents. If Valikhan had complete order with them, then I didn’t! There were international laws that, although it was written that they were valid in China, were not known about this in China itself. One day we got pulled over while I was driving, and that's what it was.
34 In other villages you will find old empty checkpoints and checkpoints, but they are no longer operational.
35 China has changed a lot over the past decade, along with its roads. And it will continue to change.
36 In general, the police here are not a nightmare for drivers, and are more involved in education than punishment.
37 Why spoil your karma and add more work? Punitive functions on the roads are performed by impartial cameras.
38 There are many of them. So many. Hidden and obvious, measuring speed, checking registration, monitoring traffic in lanes.
39 But the camera has a big advantage: it doesn’t care that you’re a foreigner.
40 Even in remote villages in the foothills of Tibet, cameras are installed. And there is no escape from this.
41 Refills. When you're on a long journey, it's not just a place to stop to fill up with gas and drain yourself. It's a whole world. I could write a separate story about gas stations in China, but I won’t.
42 By the way, Shell is the only international brand on the country’s roads, and this was its only gas station that I came across.
43 Chinese gas stations are strange. It's either empty...
44 Or thick. In the worst case, they will even pour gasoline from the tank, in the best - they will feed you, put you to bed and dance.
45 This is also a gas station, for example.
46 And here is my favorite. Lounge areas at Chinese gas stations. Ready to take a look inside?
47 Don't be afraid! We didn’t see such toilets like toilets often, we just started our journey in the poor and unkempt Inner Mongolia.
48 Usually restrooms are such grandiose buildings that it is indecent to call them toilets. Urination Palace!
49 To ensure that no one stood in line, the Chinese installed hundreds of booths at each gas station. A company of soldiers can write at the same time!
50 There was a mistake with the washbasins; in the mornings there was a line of people wanting to brush their teeth.
51 I could tell you a lot more about the roads of China, but this post is already too long. So you ask what you want to know, and I will answer.
City traffic jams after the holidays can be pretty terrible. But China just turned every driver's worst nightmare into reality as hundreds of thousands of people headed home at the end of Golden Week, a week-long national holiday.
Thousands of motorists were caught in a 50-lane traffic jam on the Beijing-Hong Kong G4 Expressway, one of the country's busiest roads. Some have already nicknamed this traffic jam “carpocalypse,” while others call it “carmageddon.” 
While foggy weather also played a role, the real culprit behind the traffic jam is a new checkpoint that narrows the 50-lane road to just 20 lanes. As a result, people were stuck in traffic jams for many hours. 
China knows firsthand what heavy traffic jams are like, especially on national highways. In 2010, a traffic jam on one of the highways stretched for as much as 74 miles, and drivers were stuck in it for 12 days. It was caused by road construction, broken cars and accidents. 
To pass the time, people played cards, and nearby vendors took advantage of the opportunity to sell them food and water at greatly inflated prices. 
In 2012, the government decided to provide citizens with free road travel during the same national holiday. As a result, 24 highways in 16 regions turned into a large parking lot, where 85 million people simply parked their cars.