Especially if your life continues in a big city, you are quite familiar with traffic jams. However, on August 14, 2010, such an interesting event took place in China that people were stuck in traffic for days, let alone a few hours.
So what caused thousands of vehicles in China to descend into such chaos?
The traffic congestion, which was over 100 kilometers long and lasted for 12 days, caused the movement of almost thousands of vehicles to be restricted.
The congestion was chaos on the G110 and Beijing-Tibet highway, one of China’s busiest roads. While drivers could barely move their vehicles 1 kilometer during the day, some of them could not move at all in this traffic for about 5-6 days.
In fact, the main reason for this confusion was the road works that started on the National Highway G110 and the sudden increase in traffic of heavy trucks heading to Beijing. This road work was a construction that reduced the capacity of the road by 50% and was one of the most important reasons for congestion.
In addition, this maintenance was not expected to be completed for approximately 1 month. Of course, some accidents occurred in the meantime and the situation got much worse.
Another reason for this suffocating crisis was the increase in the number of trucks carrying coal from Mongolia to the capital Beijing.
While the amount of coal transported in 2009 was 602 million tons, this amount increased to 730 million tons in 2010. Naturally, the increase in the number of trucks on this highway was the spice of the famous chaos.
Moreover, there were those who tried to turn the crisis into an opportunity. Various products such as water, ready-made food and cigarettes were sold at inflated prices to people stuck in traffic. For example, while 1 bottle of water was 1 yuan, roadside vendors priced it at 15 yuan.
Since the traffic was not moving, there was no point in being behind the wheel and the drivers; He started sleeping under their truck, going for walks, or playing card games.
All the while, authorities desperately tried to reduce this traffic by sending trucks on different routes and telling people not to drive.
Additionally, authorities have asked coal companies to postpone shipping efforts to resolve this crisis. The capacity of this highway was approximately 10,000 vehicles per day, but with this congestion the number increased to 14,000.
At the end of the first week, the authorities’ solutions did not seem to work, but over time the incident attracted media attention and people stopped using the highway. Finally, 12 days of chaos came to an end.
China has faced many traffic problems since that incident, but this congestion in August 2010 is believed to be the worst chaos in world history.
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