Infrastructure

China's enormous. All the cities are massive. People refer to a town of one or two million as "small". This kind of population requires a fantastic transport system, and the powers hat be are well aware; massive areas to the north, south and east of Nanjing (there's a river to the west) are mainly incomplete, but already have a complex and advanced system of wide roads ready to take all the traffic produced when these areas are complete.

But that's not enough. The city centre is also under constant developement, and needs an infrastructure to match. As a result, new highways and high speed roads have been built to provide direct links for popular journeys. Where this isn't possible, tunnels are dug to connect highways and busy traffic centres. Since we've been here, a new 8-lane road has opened cutting north/south through the south east part of the city, which connects up to the end of Longpanzhonglu (lu, 路, being Chinese for "road"), a link to a major flyover just south of the city walls. And as if this wasn't enough, a tunnel is being dug underneath this new road, to be finished in February 2007. Hopefully this should relieve traffic flow in the south-east of the city!

It's interesting to see that the municipal authorities have no problems issuing orders for major roads to be built in already busy urban areas, despite the disruption it will cause. The sooner it's started, the sooner it should be finished, and people are expected to work around any problems - there's certainly enough alternative routes for most journeys, though they can become very convoluted. In December 2006, I took a taxi round the outskirts of the city, for about 20km, as the two main conventional ways of getting back into the city were blocked as a result of accidents in heavy fog at two already overladen junctions. Incidentally, one of these junctions has already been 'fixed' (as of mid-January) and is now a working twelve lane highway/tunnel intersection - they've built a 6-lane tunnel by the yellow square and following the yellow line to help transport traffic straight through the city centre.



Here are some shots of a nearby junction. I go along this route every morning (at about 7.30am, uurgh) as part of a commute to the remote campus of my uni, which is in Jiangning the new region of town to the South.





Also an aerial view. The photos document approaching from the left, looking south. The raised road going that looks horizontal is about 40m-60m above the ground (pretty high). - it's never very busy, but the area it leads to is still developing. It's much better to build the road before there's a traffic problem!



Click to see the relevant area on Google maps.

Horse and cart

Horse and cart

There were a lot of horse-powered carts around Kunming, especially on the motorway. This one clattered by down a minor road from the airport, with another two carts in front. It's obviously owned by a rich-ish (or lazy-ish) guy - the plastic pipes look light enough to be bundled and carried between two people without any kind of vehicle at all. Nice to see!

Good steering

Good steering

Where is he going? Nobody knows! Leaving Xuzhou, there was an enourmous tailback down a 5-lane road. This truck was the culprit. You can see the feet of the driver and his mate on the other side of the truck. Oncoming traffic moved onto our side of the road and starting squeezing round the back of this truck, leaving us no way to go. Of course, everybody starting on their horns - obviously to let the people at the front know that they should move a bit quicker, because someone was in a rush, and of course beeping would definitely fix the problem, right? ;)

Driving in China

Although there are many traffic rules and regulations in China, and the roads are wide, well-surfaced and laned, the actual driving experience is pretty much total chaos. Cars are fairly recent and up until about 3 years ago everyone had bikes, so they drive like cyclists - very aggressively, and into any space they'll fit! It's pretty good fun getting an "insane" taxi driver who's more than happy to drive full pelt towards oncoming traffic (in their lane) just to skip past the queue. My favourite manouveur is crossing at a crossroads or t-junction when the lights are red, by driving over a pedestrian crossing.


It's also amazing how close people drive to each other! There's no concept of personal space, which seems fairly reasonable, after all, there are a lot of people here, and personal space isn't actually used for anything much, is it? It carries through into driving, where squeezing three cars into two lanes is completely normal, and undertaking a bus while going round a sharp corner only warrants praise.


Chinese drivers use the horn as one might use a bicycle bell - to warn people that you're approaching. Mirror usage is pretty much unheard of; listening for horns coming from behind is usually enough. As a consequence, the roads are noisy, but it's not people being angry, it's perfectly routine!


As in Italy, if you want to cross the road, or go in front of somebody, and they're not going too fast, just walk out. The chances are, you'll get beeped at, but never hit. Accidents are surprisingly rare, which leads me to think that the Chinese are, on the whole, very good drivers!


For a city that had almost no roads in 1990, Nanjing's developing hugely quickly. Roads with fewer than seven lanes are only marked as "minor" on the city map! Also, right, the traffic lights have this well good thing, where there's a big sign counting down the seconds until when the light changes. Not only does it tell you whether you need to brake for them, it stops people getting irate at lights that seem to be on forever, and gives you something to look at while you wait! This is still the best idea I've seen since I got here, it's just wicked, everybody should do it. China's infrastructure is so thoroughly well developed. They really plan their capacity too - there are many enormous roads leading to areas of nothing, where land has been zoned for future construction. There's a whole highway that's completely empty in the northeast of Nanjing, just lying in wait for when all the building work there is complete (most of the land isn't even sold yet!)