Is this world's worst traffic jam?
It certainly could be as it is over 60 miles long and already 9-days-old.
The China traffic jam on the Beijing-Tibet Expressway is just crawling along at a snail's paste according to the most recent report.
It all began on August 14th when a combination of thousands of Beijing-bound trucks, construction, and stalled cars brought traffic to a crawl.
"Insufficient traffic capacity on the National Expressway 110 caused by maintenance construction since August 19 is the major cause of the congestion," a publicity officer with the Beijing Traffic Management Bureau recently said.
National Expressway 110 (G110), which heads northwest from Beijing to Zhangjiakou in Hebei Province, and then heads directly west, is used by heavy truck traffic but the road is under repair because of the damage caused by those trucks.
Recent reports indicate that local residents are profiting from selling basic food and supplies to stuck truck drivers.
This sort of crazy congestion is unusual but not unexpected as a similar traffic snarling jam occurred on the same road earlier this year.
"The other side-effects of China's scorching economic growth, from poisonous air to worsening income inequality, are already well-known to all who visit the country," says Jamil Anderlini, deputy Beijing bureau chief for the Financial Times. "But traffic jams like this could become much more common as consumers — in what is now the world's largest car market — snap up more than 10 million vehicles a year."
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