World’s Longest Traffic Jam: To reach the office in Delhi-NCR, people take 20-25 minutes extra from time. In cities like Bengaluru, people spend half their lives in traffic jams. If you want to catch a train or flight, you have to leave home much ahead of time. You never know when you might get stuck in a traffic jam.
Once you get stuck in a jam, it is nothing less than an ordeal. A one-hour traffic jam is enough to make you go bonkers.
Here, we are sharing with you the story the world’s longest traffic jam which lasted for 12 days.
A short jam makes you restless but imagine the plight of those who were stuck in that historical jam.
For 12 days, people were stuck in such a jam that the vehicles did not even move. The life came to a standstill.
This incident took place on August 14, 2010 in China’s capital Beijing on the Beijing-Tibet Expressway (China National Highway 110). The vehicles lined up to 100 km. For 12 days, vehicles and people sitting in the car were stuck on the road. This jam is the longest jam in the history of the whole world so far. As far as one could see, only vehicles were visible.
The jam was so long that people ate there and slept there itself. The jam was caused by the trucks carrying coal and construction materials from Mongolia to Beijing for the Beijing-Tibet Expressway that was under construction. Traffic was diverted to one-way due to the ongoing work on the expressway.
Trucks carrying construction materials from Mongolia to Beijing blocked Beijing’s exit and it took the administration 12 days to clear it out.
Many vehicles were damaged, due to which the road got blocked for a longer duration. The stranded vehicles could cover only about 1 km in a day.
Temporary houses were built along the expressway for the drivers and passengers and snacks, cold drinks, noodles and other food items were sold at four times the price. People were forced to buy water at 10 times the fixed rate.
To open the jam, the administration stopped traffic on this route. The trucks stuck in the jam were let go first. The administration worked day and night to evacuate the people trapped there.
Finally, the world’s longest jam ended on 26 August 2010.
