62-mile traffic jam snarls up Beijing

BEIJING, Aug. 24 (UPI) -- The world's largest traffic jam, stretching up to 62 miles, is now in its 10th day in Beijing.

The massive tie-up has been blamed on road construction aimed at alleviating congestion caused by thousands of trucks transporting coal and perishable goods into Beijing.

At the back of the line in Inner Mongolia, trucks were reported to be inching along at 2 miles per day.

Stranded motorists -- many who were passing the time playing cards -- have complained about vendors capitalizing on the mega-traffic jam by selling bottled water, instant noodles and other foodstuffs at four times the regular price.

Congestion is expected to last for nearly another month, until the roadwork is completed.

While Beijing has taken measures to ease traffic, including introducing odd-even number traffic controls and staggered working hours, usual tie-ups on the roads are further compounded by a continual onslaught of newly purchased vehicles.

Beijing Mayor Guo Jinlong said the city aims to increase the rate of commuters using public transport to 40 percent this year from 38 percent last year.

China, the world's top emitter of greenhouse gases, overtook the United States as the world's largest auto market in terms of vehicles sold in 2009.

Beijing had a total of 4.4 million vehicles on the roads during the first half of this year, figures from the municipal commission of transport show. During the same period, the number of vehicles increased by 1,900 per day on average.

At that growth rate, the total number of vehicles in the Chinese capital would hit 7 million by 2015, said Guo Jifu, head of the Beijing Transportation Research Center, the state-owned news agency Xinhua reports.

Guo Jifu warned Monday that Beijing's road network could only accommodate 6.7 million vehicles.

Average driving speeds in Beijing would likely drop to less than 9.3 miles per hour in five years if the number of vehicles continues increasing.

Beijing scored the highest on the "commuter pain" index in an IBM Global Commuter survey, which ranks the emotional and economic toll of commuting.

A stunning 95 percent of those surveyed in Beijing said that roadway traffic had negatively affected their health, compared with 29 percent of overall respondents around the globe.

"Our government should pick up the pace of urban infrastructure construction and spend some of its budget," said Niu Fengrui, director of the Institute for Urban and Environmental Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, reports the Global Times.