Gridlock Nightmare in China

If you thought holiday or rush hour traffic was bad, you haven’t been to China. This past week became every driver’s worst nightmare when millions of people headed home on the G4 Beijing-Hong Kong-Macau Expressway (also known as Jinggang’ao Expressway) after celebrating Golden Week, thus creating what probably felt like an endless traffic jam. The mass amount of commuters created the large chaotic scene due to a new checkpoint on the expressway, where a whopping 50 lane expressway turns into only 20 lanes, creating a bottleneck like effect.  

G4 Beijing-Hong Kong-Macau Expressway is not only a popular cross country route, but it is also one of the country’s busiest roads; and is located in the Eastern part of China (where the majority of the country’s population resides). It is believed the expressway had several hundred million people who took to the roads during this week long holiday; and between the mass amounts of commuters, to the queuing toll booth, it created an experience where many motorists endured at least a 10 hour delay. 

It was reported Tuesday’s (October 6, 2015) chaos was just the start of the massive gridlock; as many vacationers continued to pile in over the next few days. However, the scene pales in comparison to the Beijing-Tibet highway gridlock in 2010, which took almost two weeks to clear (12 days); where some motorists reported to only move 1 kilometer during an entire day of traffic.