Photos from China's 10-day long traffic jam

On Monday, the BBC reported on a 62-mile traffic jam in China, northwest of Beijing, where vehicles had been almost at a standstill for nine days. Naturally, the internet was fascinated. Doctor Who references were made. Personal commutes seemed less terrible by comparison. According to that BBC story, Chinese state TV reported that everything had already returned to normal.

This does not appear to actually be the case. Unless, of course, you consider "normal" to be "truck drivers playing cards underneath their immobile rigs". The Associated Press sent a couple of Chinese correspondents out to the traffic jam Monday afternoon, and they returned with some great photos, tales of local residents gouging drivers on food and water sales, and the downright heartwarming fact that there have been no reports of road rage incidents. Some drivers reported having been stuck in the traffic jam for five days.

I wish the correspondents had been able to tell the story of how they got into and out of the jam themselves. I'm imagining a dirt bike was involved.

Sadly, it doesn't sound as though that impractical-yet-awesome-looking mega-bus on stilts would even be of much use in alleviating a traffic jam like this. Most of the vehicles involved aren't passenger cars, but shipping trucks, many hauling coal from Inner Mongolia.

The photos taken by the AP are incredible, but you'll have to follow the link to view them, as the AP tends to believe that fair use isn't and goes after blogs re-posting any of their content, even when it's praising them and pushing the links.

Maggie Koerth-Baker is the science editor at BoingBoing.net. She writes a monthly column for The New York Times Magazine and is the author of Before the Lights Go Out, a book about electricity, infrastructure, and the future of energy. You can find Maggie on Twitter and Facebook.

Maggie goes places and talks to people. Find out where she'll be speaking next.

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sarliaee

Ride a bike!
knoxblox

It seems everyone is trapped because of those fortress walls they built on either side of the roadway.
I imagine in the U.S., people would have given up after two hours of civility and said “Fuck the signs, I’m driving over the curb!”
- Anonymous
  
  Everyone drives over the curb in China regularily. There isn’t anyplace left to drive except the curbs, because everything is that crowded on a regular day.
clothesonline

I’m a Chinese,there are none report in China about this traffic jam,This news must been block buy the Chinese government.
- Anonymous
  
  actually I’d seen the report from the CCTV News1+1
Anonymous

This story has many people discussing a classic short story call “The Great Moveway Jam”, first printed in Omni Magazine and reproduced here: http://krewedukat.com/GreatMoveWayJam/great_moveway_jam.htm
Anonymous

This is virtually the plot of Julio CortÃ¡zar’s “Southern Thruway”, one of the greatest short stories ever written.
Anonymous

I tend to agree with anon5: when driving to datong (northern china’s coal capital and backdrop for an amazing 50.000 carved-out buddha’s) three years ago, our taxi driver drove past two jams of thousands of coal trucks, on improvised dirt roads. we got the impression that it was like the weather to him.
Anonymous

So, to the people saying this is being blocked in China…so how are they simultaneously blocking all information AND saying on television that it’s been resolved?ã€€Pick your propaganda, it can’t be both.

To do your homework properly:
Do a search for äº¬è—å µè½¦ on google hk or baiduï¼Œloads of results from major websites like People’s Daily, Xinhua etc…

http://news.xinhuanet.com/fortune/2010-08/22/c_12471273.htm
Anonymous

@clothesonline
I doubt that this piece of news is blocked in China. It’s that this isn’t the news in China, because this is normal in China.

It’s like reporting the rain in England.
Digilante

Of course it was blocked out – they only report on the good stuff. It was even blocked out on Chinese sites outside of China – my Chinese wife only found out after I sent her the BoingBoing link.

Honour ober alles, or however that would be in Chinese
- Trotsky
  
  Censorship in China is so bad that my Chinese wife didn’t even know she was my Chinese wife until Fed Ex let her out of the box on my lawn.
  - Digilante
    
    That’s some fairly offensive opinion there.
    - Trotsky
      
      It is humor, meant to be taken entirely as jest. Petition the moderators to remove it if it stings your eyes.
      - bbbaldie
        
        Trotsky, boingboing is a fun site, just don’t forget to be politically correct and well left of center, OK? Now we don’t want to have to tell you again…
HatOfEdshu

Honk if you’re reading this from within the 62-mile long traffic jam in China!
Big Daddy

Burning Man gets more and more crowded every year, man.
cjp

The truly mindboggling part is this quote from one of the stuck drivers which ran on CBC yesterday:

“Another driver, Wang, told Xinhua he’d been stuck in the traffic jam for three days and two nights.

“We are advised to take detours, but I would rather stay here since I will travel more distance and increase my costs,” Wang said.

I think he just doesn’t want to go home to his wife’s cooking.
Anonymous

Incredible that nobody has yet mentioned the great traffic jam scene in “Weekend” by Godard!
Seriously, they badly need to build railroad tracks for freight trains on this route…
bbbaldie

Another article I read put a lot of the blame on construction.

Uh oh, looks like some road workers are about to get executed…
Cruftbox

There was a story about a long term traffic jam in Omni Magazine back in 1979 called The Great Moveway Jam.

Here is a link to PDFs of the story: http://krewedukat.com/GreatMoveWayJam/great_moveway_jam.htm
toastmix

Reminds me of the Swedish film, “Songs from the Second Floor,” an amazingly surreal movie sort of about being stuck, in a moment, in some bind, in a mental state, trying to get out and never quite getting there. A traffic jam is shown and mentioned throughout the entire film, never ending. You can see it briefly towards the end of this clip.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=so5M8Mgf50c
Anonymous

Cars were not almost at a standstill for 10 days. THe traffic jam – which allowed cars to go about 15 mph for much of the trip – LASTED 10 days. It didn’t take 10 days for people to make the trip.
linnaeus

Julio Cortazar imagined this in his “Southern Thruway” Characters stuck on the highway to Marseille from Paris fall in love, etc. during their many days waiting in traffic, regretfully pulled apart when at last the jam ends.
Lobster

And it’s all because some dumbass decided to wait for their turn in the middle of the intersection instead of at the light.
Anonymous

Why don’t they just exit and take surface streets? I hope they getting paid by the hour!
Hosidax

Their seeming resignation to the situation is striking, but what can they do right?

There was a short story in the old “OMNI” magazine (way back when) about a giant intractable traffic jam.

In the story the jam lasted so long that the government finally just dropped concrete (from helicopters !?!) onto the peaceful 100-mile-long “village” that had resulted — repaving the road and burying everyone and everything that was stuck there.

I always remembered this story because there was a passive and fatalistic tone to it that I found horrifying and cynical and complete believable. I guess everything comes true eventually (at least partly).

Someone should warn those truckers to keep an eye out for helicopters…
- Hosidax
  
  #6 – Cruftbox thanks for the link! That’s it! I couldn’t remember the name of the story.
  
  I miss OMNI.
Anonymous

after years of pleasant cruising, 170 mp/h autobahning or worst-case stop and go i recently got caught in real jam again.
people left their cars, went for a pee and later became more adventurous, walking to get ice cream leaving their cars behind….

but suddenly the blockage (overturned car in a one-lane autobahn part under construction) was removed.

what a sight:
hundreds of people wielding ice cream cones running in a le mans start.
a mix of an old school invaders from space movie, part ant farm and part breaking down the berlin wall (with metal cars).
Francois b

The (still) amazing traffic jam scene from Godard’s “Weekend”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ScGLdfqdYo&feature=related
Anonymous

Why isn’t all that coal on trains??
Anonymous

Also Godard’s little-seen film “Weekend” (1967) where those caught in the traffic jam turn to violence.
wilberfan

I don’t know, do the numbers really add up? Wouldn’t you need a major mobilization of resources to get enough food and water to this many people for this many days? Would “local residents” be enough (price-gouging, or not)? And what about, uh, waste-management?
Trotsky

I’m surprised no news agency genius has used “Great Stall of China” yet. I should google it to check.

My bad.

They’re already on it.

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Great+Stall+of+China%22