The highway between Beijing and Tibet suffered a number of monster traffic jams when trucks including a large proportion of coal trucks became involved in gridlock with queues stretching up to 120km long in places.
The problems have been caused by new coal mines opening in north west China at the same time as a new Beijing to Xinjiang highway is being built. The large number of trucks being diverted onto the smaller, older roads is causing a massive pile up of traffic in Inner Mongolia.
The massive queues have been estimated to include up to 10,000 trucks and are becoming a growing problem on the Chinese road system. The Chinese government’s extensive infrastructure building program is struggling to keep up with the rapid increase in traffic levels caused by continuing strong economic growth in the country.