China’s Largest Toll Plaza Sees 24-Hour Traffic Jam as 120,000 Vehicles Return Home After Holidays
Traffic Jam: The country's largest toll station, located in China's Anhui Province, experienced a massive traffic jam on Monday, October 6th. As millions of people returned home after the long National Day and Mid-Autumn Festival holidays, the roads were clogged with vehicles.
On Monday (i.e, October 6th), the country's largest toll station, located in China's Anhui Province, experienced a massive traffic jam. As millions of people returned home after the long National Day and Mid-Autumn Festival holidays, the roads were clogged with vehicles. According to the Daily Mail, the jam lasted for nearly 24 hours, with thousands of vehicles stuck bumper-to-bumper.
The scene at the Wuzhuang Toll Station, which has 36 lanes, was nothing short of a scene straight out of a movie. Red brake lights flashed everywhere, and vehicles moved at a snail's pace. Drone footage from above showed hundreds of cars stretching across multiple lanes and then constricting to just four lanes at the toll gate, creating a bottleneck. Officials estimated that around 120,000 vehicles would pass through the toll that day.
This year, China's National Day holiday coincided with the Mid-Autumn Festival, giving people an eight-day holiday from October 1st to 8th. According to China's Ministry of Culture and Tourism, a record 888 million trips were made during this period, far exceeding last year's 765 million.
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People reacted to the viral video on social media with a range of responses. One user wrote, "This is what happens when you merge 32 lanes into six." Another said, "Chaos looks beautiful when you're not stuck in it."
A third user wrote, "Don't let everyone drive, improve public transportation, and control traffic." In a humorous comment, someone wrote, "So always keep an empty bag, cup, and snacks in your car." Someone jokingly wrote, "This seems like a typical day in Gurugram."
This isn't the first time such a jam has occurred in China. In 2010, a nearly 100-kilometer-long traffic jam occurred on the Beijing-Tibet Expressway, lasting 12 days. Some trucks broke down midway, turning the highway into a temporary parking lot.
This time, the jam may have cleared within a day, but it once again proved that even the world's largest roads can become helpless when millions of people are traveling at once.
