A nine-day traffic jam in China is now more than 100 kilometres long and could last for weeks

[Coyotl]

A nine-day traffic jam in China is now more than 100 kilometres long and could last for weeks, state media reported Monday.

Thousands of trucks en route to Beijing from Huai’an in the southeast have been backed up since Aug. 14, making the National Expressway 100 impassable, Xinhua News reported.

A spokesman for the Beijing Traffic Management Bureau reportedly told China’s Global Times newspaper that the backup was due to “insufficient traffic capacity … caused by maintenance construction.”

The construction is scheduled to last until Sept. 13.

Stranded drivers appear to have few options .....

http://theinternetpost.net/2013/02/25/100-km-chinese-traffic-jam-enters-day-9/

[Ptah]

1. Yikes!

[muriel_volestrangler]

20. Fake picture - see #18 (nt)

[Berlum]

21. "China can grow it's way out of this by embracing RepubliCONomics." - Republican 'Economists' (R)

[NYC_SKP]

2. Crap, before long their skys might look like Hong Kong's"

[marmar]

3. Craziness.

[Xipe Totec]

4. This is how a coronary infarction looks in traffic arteries. nt

[avaistheone1]

22. lol

[KansDem]

5. Reminds me of this *Far Side* cartoon...

[Inkfreak]

6. That is just insane. (nt)

[Vashta Nerada]

7. Why would anyone use that highway?

This isn't the first time it has happened either.

[kentuck]

8. wow!

Construction work, huh?

[L0oniX]

9. Maybe we could sell them some cheap traffic lights. n/t

[Xipe Totec]

10. The article is from February, by the way,

And the photo is from here:

http://www.thedetroitbureau.com/2012/09/preparing-for-carmageddon-ii-the-sequel/

[Lydia Leftcoast]

11. Ironically, the Chinese government began ENCOURAGING automobile ownership

in the mid 1990s.

I was there in the summer of 1990. The pollution from coal burning factories and homes was already bad enough. Because you can't drink unboiled tap water, we'd draw off some boiled water in the morning and put it in a covered teacup to use to brush our teeth in the evening, by which time the lid of the teacup would be covered in fine coal dust. However, most people rode bicycles or public transit, so at least there was no auto exhaust pollution. In Beijing, which is perfectly flat with little rainfall, riding bicycles made perfect sense.

Then the Chinese government began building freeways and encouraging people to buy cars. When I heard about this, I thought that this was the dumbest thing they'd done since the "kill the birds" campaign. (Mao, as an old farm boy, thought of birds mostly as critters that nibbled on rice crops, so he encouraged people to kill them. To the surprise of no one who actually knows about the balance of nature, insects went out of control.)

By the time of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, air quality in Beijing was even worse than in 1990. Remember how they had to shut down the factories and limit automobile travel to prevent the air from killing the athletes?

[Lars39]

12. Good grief! And as usual, Dr Who is ahead on these things....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gridlock_(Doctor_Who)

[randome]

14. HTTP encoding doesn't like your parentheses. The below works.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gridlock_%28Doctor_Who%29
[hr][font color="blue"][center]You should never stop having childhood dreams.[/center][/font][hr]

[Lars39]

25. Sorry 'bout that...worked for me.

[Xipe Totec]

13. The event started August 14, 2010. The story is from three years ago.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_National_Highway_110_traffic_jam

[Orrex]

15. Damn! I hope that they get home soon!

Three years is a hell of a traffic jam!

[MineralMan]

16. That's a big-ass freeway.

How China has changed, eh?

[muriel_volestrangler]

19. Faked - see #18 (nt)

[MineralMan]

23. Thanks! I appreciate the heads-up.

[brooklynite]

17. Um, as a professional Transportation Planner, can I say this story is misleading?

Yeas there's is (was?) a traffic jam, but the photos have nothing to do with it. The traffic delays are on a rural highway. The photos appear to be traffic in and around Beijing that are generally lousy.

[muriel_volestrangler]

18. The aerial photo is faked from an American one

See http://www.bricoleurbanism.org/whimsicality/when-photoshop-is-so-good-its-bad/ - you can compare the original (non-jammed) and the one with lots of cloned cars and extra lanes.

I think this shows us how ironic The Internet Post's claim is:

THE INTERNET POST
Welcome to TIP. ABC, CBS, NBC and all the cable news channels are all bought and paid for and report what they are told to report. The MSM lies to and instigates people into political argument and gossip that leads to dead end roads and distracts from the real issues. There is much better informational news reporting away from the Democrat and Republican tail-spinning arguments that are usually rooted in confusion and hate.. TIP is your alternative.

I wouldn't trust 'TIP' to tell me the capital of France.

[CountAllVotes]

24. What happened to all of the smog?

If this was really Bejing, I do not believe you could see a thing as the area is invisible these days thanks to smog aplenty!