Great Truck Wall * China - Highway jam enters its 9th day, spans 100km

Trucks bound for Beijing stand virtually still on the Beijing-Tibet Expressway, formerly known as the Badaling Expressway

Beijing,China -Global Times, by Guo Qiang & Fang Yunyu -August 23 2010: ... Traffic authorities were still struggling to cope with days-long congestion on a major national expressway, nine days after traffic slowed to a snail's pace, and nearby residents are profiting on the latest traffic snarl by overcharging drivers for food... Since August 14, thousands of Beijing-bound trucks have jammed the expressway again, and traffic has stretched for more than 100 kilometers between Beijing and Huai'an in Heibei Province, and Jining in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, reported Sunday... The National Expressway 110 (G110), heading northwest from Beijing to Zhangjiakou in Hebei Province, and then heading directly west, is available to trucks with a carrying capacity of eight tons and above. The road suffered serious damage due to the greater volume of heavy trucks... The congestion is expected to last for almost a month, since the construction is due for completion September 13... Traffic congestion and road safety have become major concerns for Chinese motorists... For drivers, suffering the congestion on the Beijing-Tibet Expressway is nothing new. In a similar scene this July, traffic was also reduced to a crawl for nearly one month... Some killed time by playing cards, while some could only wait idly by... (Photo: Xinhua)


* China - Traffic Jam: An Expert on What It All Means

New York,NY,USA -The WSJ/Drivers' Seat, by Jonathan Welsh -August 25, 2010: ... In his bestselling 2008 book “Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us),” Tom Vanderbilt examined road development and trends and patterns in traffic flow, among other things... The book revealed a lot about how our driving routines and habits contribute to traffic troubles and how broader cultural trends determine a lot about how we use our vehicles and roads...

- Driver’s Seat: Do you see patterns in the Chinese traffic jam that are familiar? Could the same thing happen in the U.S.?

- Tom Vanderbilt: From what I can tell, this was something of a “perfect storm,” traffic-wise — you have a road under construction in a remote area that is experiencing a frenetic burst of economic activity. There are other cases that have been extreme —the last weekend in France in August, for example, when everyone’s returning from holiday, or the episode in Pennsylvania earlier this year when extreme icing stranded a huge number of drivers for a dozen hours... But we should also remember the ‘non-linear nature’ of traffic: One stalled vehicle on a two-lane road can cut the entire capacity in half, because of the bottleneck. It doesn’t take much to start a jam, and it takes longer for drivers to emerge from it than it takes them to get into it... But I saw a comment from a truck driver that was telling: “Everybody has to use this road as the other is too expensive, it should be free.” That’s the root of the problem here. When a scarce good is under-priced, we trade the savings in money for costs in time — more people will queue for it. The other road may be overpriced, but I can guarantee that no traffic problem has ever been solved by making a crowded road free...

- DS: What steps can we in the US take to solve ours?

- TV: I’ve seen all kinds of novel attempts to combat congestion worldwide; I’ve just returned from Bogota, Colombia, where a major two-way street becomes one-way on the stroke of five to accommodate the outflow of the evening rush, and cars with certain numbered license plates are not allowed in the city on certain days... The future, I think, lies in what’s called “ITS,” for intelligent transportation systems — everything from sensors that detect slowing traffic and set new speed limits to avoid severe traffic “shockwaves,” to real-time pricing based on the current occupancy of the road. We can’t reasonably build our way of traffic, but we can think — and pay — our way out... (Photo from Getty Images: Truckers wait for a break in the days-long traffic jam near Beijing)


* China - Ports gain prominence in recession

Newark,NJ,USA -Today's Trucking (CAN) -24 Aug 2010: -- Only two of the top 15 ports weathered the worst year ever in container shipping and – surprise – they're both in China... The two ports aren't necessarily the largest either. Guangzho (the 6th largest container port in the world) and Tianjin (No. 11) experienced overall growth in 2009... According to the Journal of Commerce's 2010 ranking of the Top 50 World Container Ports, large Chinese ports took a hit last year compared to 2008, but overall the ports gained greater worldwide prominence... Despite double-digit declines in 2009 from the world's top five ports -- Singapore, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Shenzhen and Busan – Asia's marketshare in manufacturing and maritime trade expanded in the downturn, the report states... Eight of the top nine ports remain in Asia and six of the top nine are in China... The largest ports on this side of the pond are still Los Angeles and Long Beach... (Photo from lifeofguangzhou: Port of Guangzhou in South China and Port of Ningbo in East China edged in the world’s top ten container ports in terms of the throughput in 2008.)


* USA - The Inconvenient Truth About Traffic Math: Progress Is Slow. "there is absolutely no way congestion can stop increasing"

New York,NY,USA -The WSJournal, by CARL BIALIK -August 28, 2010: -- This month's 60-mile traffic jam in China has demonstrated a frustrating truth about traffic: It is far easier to measure than mitigate... Mathematicians, engineers and planners are making steady advances in assessing traffic congestion and explaining it. Radar and GPS devices help pinpoint cars and relay traffic data in real time. And sophisticated models can explain maddening phenomena such as phantom jams, when cars slow even without congestion. But traffic math's strides in reducing congestion are modest, simply because the number of cars often exceeds roadway capacity... If population and the economy keep growing, "there is absolutely no way congestion can stop increasing," says Alex Bayen, an associate professor of systems engineering at the University of California, Berkeley... And congestion hasn't stopped increasing. The Texas Transportation Institute, a research group at Texas A&M University, has tracked traffic in hundreds of U.S. urban areas since the 1980s. One measure, the Travel Time Index, indicates how much longer a trip takes during peak travel time—generally, rush hour—than when there is free flow. In 1982, a rush-hour trip took 9% longer, on average. A quarter century later, after steady increases, the peak trip took 25% longer than when the road was clear... (Photo by Associated Press. A jammed section of the Beijing-Zhangjiakou highway in Huailai)