Comments on: Why Is Traffic So Miserable In Beijing? A Five-Minute Tutorial

By: » Beijingers’ Commute Time Increased By 14 Minutes From Last Year, Says Report Beijing Cream

Thu, 01 Nov 2012 05:29:26 +0000

[...] face it, some people could use the exercise. What we don’t need are wider thoroughfares (they don’t work), or anyone defending the idea that adding cars to this city’s roads is [...]

By: » Schadenfreude Blossoms As Beijing Enters “Worst Week Of Traffic” Beijing Cream

Wed, 26 Sep 2012 08:46:22 +0000

[...] traffic already constantly forever sucks goat testicles all the time, but Traffic Week from Hell — as drivers go nuts before National Day holiday [...]

By: Ashley Tumson

Ashley Tumson — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 16:05:04 +0000

A friend of mine studies highway traffic patterns and told me something really interesting.

It doesn’t matter how wide a motorway is – it can have 3 lanes, 4 lanes, 5 lanes, whatever, it will never increase efficiency because one way or another the 3-4-5 lanes will be reduced to 1-2 lanes, thereby creating a bottleneck effect. It doesn’t matter how long the motorway is, the bottleneck effect will be felt all throughout the motorway, so answering your question about increased efficiency, they don’t.

By: Ruud van Winden

Ruud van Winden — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 05:06:41 +0000

Here you go, some more stats on the 5 million cars Beijing proudly owns:

The 62,5 km/2 (total land area within the second ring road) is on the dot the exact space needed if you park all 5 million cars Beijing has door-to-door, bumper-to-bumper on a standard 5.00 x 2.50 meter parking space.

Mind you, this would be without any aisles to drive your car out of this amazingly big parking lot.

The same 5 million cars bumper-to-bumper (based on average length 4 meters) would span half way around the world: 20,000 km! A nice traffic jam, and it sure beats the 100 km traffic jam of August 2010 near Beijing by a long shot.

Stacked on top of each other these 5 million cars (based on an average 1.60 height) would reach a staggering 8,000 kilometers, that is roughly the distance between Beijing and Paris…

With these numbers in mind it is a miracle traffic in Beijing is moving at all…