Notes From Xi'an 西安随感

What is it that makes people so self-concerned and so blinkered to the consequences of their actions? I don’t know but check out any road junction here in Xi’an and you’ll see the consequences. I have arrived back in Xi’an to discover that the road maintenance work on Chang An Nan Lu has nearly been completed. There is however a small stretch that remains without road markings and that includes a small side road junction with traffic lights still not turned on, the road at this point has space for about six lanes. I was stuck in an almighty traffic jam this week realising that though we were in the third (outside) lane going south, the three lanes further over were also going south, to put it another way all six lanes of traffic were going in the same direction! I thought for a second whether there was anywhere the oncoming traffic may have been re-routed to but realised there wasn’t, simply the cars behind had grown impatient and dived for the space to their left.

 

 

Now we were waiting as all six lanes of traffic funnelled back into one lane. The oncoming traffic was obviously causing a blockhead further down the road but because they in turn had become frustrated, buses and lorries had crossed over and were heading north on our side of the road. The situation then being: six lanes of traffic heading south, being met at some point by three lanes heading north, correctly on their side of the road, and two lanes of traffic heading north on our side of the road. This left one lane for all of our six lanes to funnel back into.

Needless to say, a journey that, at that time of the day, usually takes about one minute, took close to forty-five minutes. A couple of days later I was at the same junction on my bike and was faced with vehicles that were pointing as if to every point on a compass, in a vehicular state not dissimilar to one of Mr. Jackson Pollock’s most random of paintings. I actually tried to help out a bit, holding back a line of traffic for a minute so to let two buses, that were sitting perpendicular to a line of traffic, pass through. However, no sooner had they moved out the way when three cars appeared on the wrong side of the road facing the line now freed by the buses departure, freedom was here a fleeting thing and only felt, not actually realized. I cycled off down the road.

I will finish this note with the observation that this kind of thing is not uncommon on the roads here, not always on this scale but scale is itself relative to circumstance- meaning: road junctions here are often a baffling, exceptionally frustrating, crazy mess of the most incomprehensible congestion, whether made of many or just a few vehicles. However, the majority involved actually tend to stay remarkably calm and that I suppose, amongst the things that aren’t, is to their credit.

Tags: Traffic and Transport China, Xi'an

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 10th, 2009 at 23:50 and is filed under General Social/ Cultural Matters China, Xi'an. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.