For United States drivers stressed about their commute, a traffic jam inside china could help them keep things in perspective. By the time the Chinese traffic jam was 10 days along, it had grown to be about 60 miles long. Road construction in Beijing has caused a pileup of automobiles on a road between the capital and the city of Zhangjiokou that is expected to continue at a crawl until the project is finished. The parade of autos inches along to the tune of about a kilometer a day. Some drivers trapped in the road traffic have not emerged for five days. China’s growing traffic jam problem can be traced to overflowing need for coal and also the trucks to haul it, also as the shipping required to meet the needs of a surging economy based on consumption. Article resource – Epic Chinese traffic jams caused b! y exploding consumer demand by Personal Money Store.
Chinese customer need clogging highways
Drivers in china have learned to expect congested zones. However, the current congestion is well-nigh intolerable, even by Chinese standards. The Wall Street Journal reports that road construction began the road traffic jam Aug. 14 in China’s Heibei Province on a major highway leading to Beijing. Congestion worsened as some autos collided and others broke down. The road traffic jam is expected to last as long as the construction project-about a month. Gridlock on this highway has become the norm as the capital city’s population of 20 million consumes more goods.
Trucks hauling coal bombard Beijing route
China’s economy, the fastest-growing in the world, generates a huge demand for coal to produce electricity. The increasing number of trucks shipping that coal is a principal cause of the traffic jam problem. Bloomberg reports that Inner Mongolia, a huge border province northwest of Beijing, surpassed Shanxi province last year to become China’s biggest coal supplier. After a pattern of fatal accidents, the Chinese government closed numerous mines in Shanxi–a province southwest of Beijing with an established railway infrastructure. Inner Mongolia currently lacks the railway capacity to carry the hundreds of millions of tons of coal it produces. Suppliers are forced to ship the coal with trucks via Beijing to port cities, where it is shipped to power plants in southern China.
Capitalism emerges within the strangest spots
Dealing with the frustration of the China road traffic jam took numerous forms. Anger and violence are nonexistent, NPR reports, while sidelined drivers played cards and chess, took walks or just tried to sleep through it. People sustained themselves on food sold by locals, who were making a killing peddling their wares on bicycles. The Chinese traffic jam provided an old-fashioned capitalist lesson in supply and demand. Complaints about inflated prices were common as drivers relied on the locals to keep from going hungry. A bottle of water that normally costs 1 yuan (15 cents) was selling for 10 yuan ($ 1.50). The price of a 3 yuan- (45 cent) cup of instant noodles had more than tripled.
Wall Street Journal
blogs.wsj.com/drivers-seat/2010/08/24/chinese-traffic-jam-stretches-60-miles-ten-days/
Bloomberg
businessweek.com/news/2010-08-24/chinese-demand-for-coal-spurs-9-day-traffic-jam-on-expressway.html
NPR
npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129395326
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