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Update September 2, 2010:

A little more than a week after Chinese authorities managed to clear the below-mentioned jam, an all new 120km jam in the same northeastern province has occurred. This time, more than 10,000 trucks, mostly carrying coal out of the Inner Mongolian mines, are stuck in a delay that could end up being even more extensive than its predecessor.

The delays started on Tuesday morning as a result of traffic restrictions in Hebei that effected traffic flow on the highway. State television has described the Bejing-Hebei highway as currently being ‘like a car park’.

Because most of the stuck vehicles are heavy coal trucks, they are blocking what few relief roads exist in the long rural stretches of road. The Texas based City of College Station traffic research group recently published an investigation into why the Chinese roads are growing increasingly prone to this kind of mammoth congestion. “There isn’t the redundancy we take for granted” said traffic analyst Shawn Turner. A critical shortcoming in China’s relatively young highway system is that it lacks the smaller county roads that offer Western drivers alternative routes when they are slowed by traffic congestion. Taking an alternative route is simply not an option for many Chinese drivers.

Vehicles in the new jam has been stuck for up to five days. The same gray-market economy of massively overpriced water and consumables has reappeared, but even faster than last time as locals are beginning to make a cottage industry of gouging the stranded drivers. No consistent estimation of how long this new jam will take to clear has been issued.

Original article:

The epic 62-mile long traffic jam on the Beijing-Tibet Expressway has entered its 10^th day. The jam, involving tens of thousands of drivers, has been caused by roadwork obstructing heavy-goods traffic exacerbated by breakdowns, collisions and the growing commercial and criminal micro-economies that have sprung up around it.

The load on the Beijing-Tibet Expressway has been increasing by 40 percent every year for nearly a decade, and in the past two years there has been an exponential growth in the number of heavy vehicles using the route.  China relies on coal for the vast majority of its energy production, but after a series of deadly accidents and collapses in the Shanxi region, more and more of the supply has had to come from the Inner Mongolia mines, from which few railway links exist. Vast quantities of coal and heavy machinery are now transported on the Expressway, in addition to the growing civilian traffic, causing frequent jams but never of this magnitude.

The current speed of traffic is approximately 2 miles per day. Local residents started selling water, instant noodles, eggs and cigarettes to drivers soon after the jam began, weaving through stationary traffic with improvised stands. As the days have advanced, there have been increasing reports of extortion and profiteering. Water has reached a premium and is sold by the cup, cigarettes are sold at over five times the shop value and some drivers have been forced to pay protection to avoid broken windscreens or slashed tires during the night.

Comments as to how long the jam will last vary depending on the source. Some government officials have said that the backup will continue well into September for as long as the roadwork lasts, whereas state television reported yesterday that the situation ‘had already returned to normal’.

“The situation may ease in three or four years, when rail capacity from Inner Mongolia to Caofeidian gets upgraded and the new rail line to Liaoning province starts,” said David Fang, a director at the China Coal Transport and Distribution Association, in a telephone interview.

References

Xinhua
Forbes
BBC
The Wall Street Journal
The Telegraph
Reuters
Sky News
Wall Street Journal