Life Inside China's 60-Mile, 11-Day Traffic Jam

Traffic jam in Beijing (Flickr: johnmcga)

(The Takeaway)  For nearly two weeks, a stretch of highway outside Beijing saw monster gridlock, which stretched out over sixty miles and trapped drivers on China's National Highway 110 for days. It had been expected to last until mid-September, but last Thursday, after eleven days, the traffic jam suddenly broke.

Many people, of course, are wondering: Where did it go? How did it start? And could this kind of jam happen again?

The Takeaway spoke this morning with David Schrank, co-author of the Urban Mobility Report from the Texas Transportation Institute. He and his colleagues watched the Chinese traffic jam closely, and have been consulting traffic institutes in China on how to manage their road congestion in the future.

You'll also hear the voice of Zhang Lijia, a freelance journalist in Beijing who was trapped in the traffic jam for eleven hours.