You’re stuck in the rush hour jam with an important meeting 15 minutes away, two hundred cars in front of you before you reach the office building, your coffee getting cold, and you getting immune to the persistent honking of horns other motorists seem to find solace in. Bored, you try it out too and find that it doesn’t do much to make you forget that you’re 200 cars away and you’re not going to reach that conference room on time.
This happens to almost 75% of people working in America, which would make you think that it has the worst rush hour scenario in the world. Well, we can take the “better them than us” perspective and look at other motorists who have actually had it worse. Below are the top 10 traffic jams recorded in history.
Beijing
The next traffic line is less than half as long, but it was so bad that drivers were stuck on the road for almost two weeks. We’re talking about the traffic jam in Beijing which had people playing chess inside their vehicles just to kill time and street vendors taking full advantage of the situation by selling food and other basic amenities along the road.
The reason behind this jam was simply the heightened number of cars passing along the highway coupled with road repairs and construction. While not all jams lasted for a little less than two weeks, this area suffered from unusually heavy traffic thanks to the road repairs. It was reported that up to 17,000 cars cross the National Expressway 100 everyday, which is a major road connecting Zhangjiakou to Beijing.
Between Paris and Lyon
Believe it or not, the second longest traffic jam recorded in history wasn’t in the last ten years. It was in 1980 and it ran for up to 110 miles or 176 kilometers long. This strip was between Paris and Lyon on the Autoroute in France. There was no excuse for it, save for the fact that there were too many people thinking going to the same place all at once.
Gridlock in New York
New York’s streets work like a well-oiled and tightly constructed machine. When you keep the flow going, there’s nothing to worry about, but when two or more cars collide and pedestrians start to block one of the main intersecting arteries, the whole city stops moving.
The worst traffic gridlock in New York occurred very recently when the box intersecting the 57th street and the 1st avenue were blocked by both people on foot and behind the wheels.
Taipei
In Taipei, traffic jams are also common denominators in everyone’s life. It seems inescapable, what with the rising number of motorists and the stubbornly narrow roads which are more used to seeing the glory days of bicycles rather than concrete and rubber wheels.
Just to give you an idea of how populated this city is, the major cause of traffic isn’t just the fact that there are too many cars. At least 45% of the motorists ride motorcycles, but that doesn’t mean that traffic here isn’t as bad as anywhere else where cars seem to be the main choice of transportation.
Sao Paulo
Sao Paulo, Brazil broke the Autoroute’s record with 295 kilometers of accumulated traffic lines recorded in 2009. Over 35% of Sao Paulo’s population was probably on the road during this time to cause so much traffic. With not even half of the city’s population clogging the streets, you start to think that maybe something needs to be done to control the car use in this part of Brazil.
Nowshera, Pakistan
Apparently, democracy also causes traffic. Human roadblocks stopped the traffic at Nowshera, Pakistan when flood-stricken communities decided it was time for their needs to be aired out. This was a strange demonstration, though, with the afflicted communities just demanding that they get aid from the government. Usually, this would have been given without the need for human roadblocks.
North India
The traffic jam in North India was caused by the events celebrating Diwali. While it caused local and foreigner motorists great discomfort, having to sit around for hours just waiting for the traffic to loosen up, the gods must have been pleased. It would have been a street party if people weren’t slowly losing their tempers.
Moscow
Moscow is one of the cities which never seem to run out of excuses when it comes to traffic jams. When it gets severely cold in winter, traffic literally freezes over with black ice. The other reason is the spiking population of the city, which means that more people would own more cars. It sounds like a fallacy right now, but that’s actually what happened to Moscow.
We’re not taking the trouble to even mention how long the traffic lines grow here every day because there’s no reason to. Traffic is pretty consistently bad in Moscow. It seems that for things to flow more smoothly a lot of roads simply need to be widened. Moscow’s geography seemed to have been too used to its small population a few years ago. These traffic jams demand for change.
Texas
When Hurricane Rita hit the USA, massive traffic jams occurred caused by the influx or people trying to flee for their lives from Houston, Texas. This happened in 2005, and while it may have been generally discomfiting for a lot of motorists, the mood was generally calm, probably because people knew what was going on. The tightest spot of this traffic jam was Interstate 45 which was the official route the government assigned for evacuation.
Patna
Another protest rally caused heavy traffic in Patna as different organizations declared the day protest day to air out their various needs. Because of the sheer number of protesters blocking major arteries of the city, motorists had to sit around for almost a whole day just to get from point A to point B. Moral of the story: demonstrators should take turns. Of course, if they wanted to get the government’s attention, the December 1, 2009 traffic worked too.
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