Think Auckland has a congestion problem, take a look at these images from China a few days ago on the Beijing-Hong Kong-Macao Expressway. It’s the result of people heading home at the end of a week long national holiday.
The bottleneck kind of reminds me of this image from Sydney – and which is equally appropriate for another road based harbour crossing
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What can you say? Is this where we want to head?
This picture and story in the original source is a bit misleading. They imply the whole highway is this wide, but in reality it is just the toll plaza on a 3-4 lane highway as seen with google maps https://goo.gl/maps/YZNF2iZckAC2 . It is unlear how far things are backed up.
Yeah, could probably get a picture like this at many a toll booth in the US though they wouldn;t look so impressive as the number of booths is typically smaller and the tailback longer…
As a child I spent plenty of time on the back seat of our car in queues at toll booths in France.
This jam appears to be especially bad though. You see people getting out of their cars at the beginning of the footage. It’s also clearly visible there is a traffic jam after the toll booths as well.
Looks like it is a fairly regular occurance,
This was Feb this year , same place,
http://english.sina.com/china/2015/0225/785790.html
Apparently it is compounded by out of Province vehicles having to pay extra tolls to enter the Beijing roading system
Another insane thing on that video is the smog. You can hardly see the ground anymore when the drone climbs up a bit.
Not really insane to anyone who’s spent any time in China! That is pretty mild smog for Beijing compared to the middle of winter.
Our guide in China thought that the blue skies in photos of Australia were photoshopped until he started working with foreigners.
It’s obvious innit? The Chinese just did not build enough lanes!
I mean the more and bigger road(s) we have the less congestion. Stands to reason . It can’t possibly be any other way.
Regards
S. Joyce.
I go out of my way to avoid peak traffic in Auckland (as much as is possible). I’d loose the plot in a jam like that.
Mismanaged traffic control.
How can they have such a wide road going though a small bottleneck. Who design that?
They should at least have electronic payment priority lane. As soon as it is significantly faster, many cars will register and use it.
More information is also needed to broadcast information to public to not to take that road, so people can use other transport options.
However I highly doubt their government management care since those officials are not elected. They will just ask the central government to pump in more budget so the official can corrupt more money from it.
When you look at the video they show a very brief shot of the bottleneck which isnt the toll plaza but the 3 or 4 lane section downstream of it. (The cars are still crawling after the toll plaza) There is mention online of some sort of checkpoint there causing the backlog.
The solution is obvious, build a 25 lane flyover and remove the toll.
We have the design idiots here in NZ. In Auckland the southern motorway southbound has 7 lanes of cars converge into 2 between Manukau and Manurewa. Whoever designed that needed shooting.
Isn’t it more than 7 southbound lanes that converge at the SW intersection of the motorway? to 3 at Manurewa to 2 at the downhill to Takanini?
So you build another motorway (but don’t call it a motorway) parallel over the hills at Redoubt Road and cure it!
You should see Manila voted worst on earth. We have roads here there and everywhere, bus passengers standing the middle of the street waiting to catch the bus blocking the cars, street vendors on side walks, people crossing against the red man (paying attention of course) and so much more undisciplined problems
In New Zealand we would solve that by spending millions on a cycleway along side it for 10 cyclists to use.
Ludicrous that we would even try and solve any congestion that only occurs on holiday weekends isn’t it?
Seems like a train might fit a fair few of those people in… …just saying.