Chaos on the roads

That's Beijing magazine has been running a competition this month to find the longest delay in traffic during a cab ride in the city (apparently there's a separate record of 'wait' time on the receipt - who knew?).

The fates have been unusually kind to me so far this month. I would have had a leading contender last month, when a moment's inattention resulted in my being taken on to Shuangqing Lu - surely one of the worst traffic jam black spots in the whole city. I was heading from the SE corner of Tsinghua University to Liudaokou (next to the Forestry University), a distance of not more than than 2.5 miles. It took me over 50 minutes, and I swear I was completely stationary for at least half of that. I wouldn't normally expect it to take more than 10. Heck, I could have walked it in 35 minutes..... but it was raining. I had done my best to instruct the driver, in my fumbling Chinese, that he should go straight over the Wudaokou level crossing and then hang a left; but he seemed insistent that it would be quicker to take the left before the crossing, leading to the dreaded Shuangqing Lu. It's a fairly narrow road; and, just at the point where it crosses the railway line, it crosses/merges with two other larger roads; and there seem to be no traffic lights at this junction - or, at least, none that work in any kind of sensible way. Traffic from all directions meshes together, and........ gridlock. Time and again. I should have known better: I've encountered this before - though not nearly as badly. I'm sure my cab-driver knew this too, but thought it an easy stratagem to bump up my fare.

And god knows, Chengfu Lu, the main east-west road running from BLCU (the Beijing Language & Culture University, home to one of the largest populations of overseas students studying Mandarin) to Tsinghua and Peking University, is plenty bad enough. Two really rather superflous pedestrian crossings in quick succession, then two more sets of traffic lights for side roads, either side of the level-crossing. And the situation is made even worse by the huge number of bus routes along that stretch of road. Even when traffic is light, it can take 10 minutes or more to cover the mile along the south side of the BLCU campus. In the rush hour, things almost invariably grind to a standstill. Indeed, they can be pretty bloody awful at almost any hour of the day (on a number of occasions, when in a hurry, I have actually found it quicker to get out of a cab, walk half a mile to the other side of the railway line, and hail another one there). Yep, Chengfu Lu and Shuangqing Lu are to be avoided at all costs - unless you want to win That's Beijing's prize that badly.

In fact, I got caught out by the Curse of Chengfu Lu a week or so ago, when I wasn't even on Chengfu Lu. No, I was in a cab heading south on Xueyuan Lu, which crosses it. I do this journey home from one of my regular recording studios quite a lot, and it doesn't usually take me more than 20 or 25 minutes to cover the full 8 miles home. On this occasion, it took me that long to cover the block and a half from the studio to the junction with Chengfu Lu (admittedly, these are very long blocks: perhaps three quarters of a mile or so each). Because...... despite Chengfu Lu being backed up solid (or so I imagine) all the way from the Wudaokou railway line, buses were still streaming across the junction in their eagerness to join this traffic jam, and had completely blocked Xueyuan Lu. Really. The bus drivers were completely ignoring the traffic lights; or, at any rate, they were ignoring the fact that there was no space for them to drive into on the far side of the junction. And, of course, there was no sign of a policeman anywhere who might try to sort this mess out.

Once we managed to get to the front of the queue at this set of lights, and to find a hole to weave through in this seemingly unbroken line of stationary buses, it was plain sailing on the other side: we got home from there in less than 15 minutes.

I kid you not: a roadblock of buses!! Only in China???