Chengdu public complains about traffic
Chengdu residents are not very happy about the city's traffic, and who can blame them? Taxi fares have just increased, the nearly-open subway might not go where they need to, and there are just too many vehicles on the road.
Late last week, a forum poster started a thread titled "Appeal for Help: Constructed Traffic Jams Should Be Managed. The thread quickly heated up, and by Sunday evening there were over 300 posts in it, with citizens offering their ideas and opinions on why Chengdu's traffic is so bad and what to do about it.
The original post:
This is Caoshi Jie, next to the parking lot for the government administrative buildings. Every morning at around 9 o'clock, there's simply a mess of cars, electric bicycles, bicycles, pedestrians all suffering an unspeakable misery. Why is it like this every day? Hopefully the relevant departments can harmonize and manage this. Actually, it's quite simple: The parking lot opens at 9:30; if it would open half an hour earlier, the residents would be able to commute through smoothly!
A selection of thread responses:
1: The transportation department doesn't know what to do, they only know how to manage vehicles, not people. I don't think these people are color-blind, they're just weak-minded!!!!!!
2: The most annoying are the rickshaws
3: It's still not as congested as Shunjiang Lu.
4: It's not strange at all, over 80 percent of Chengdu's traffic jams are created by people from the relevant departments.
5: People don't yield to vehicles, vehicles don't yield to people. You don't yield to me, I don't yield to you. All of this just to snatch one or two seconds. Everybody come together in traffic jams—the heart is wider than the road!
6: How can this be regarded as a traffic jam? I'm often stuck in traffic for over half an hour to go the distance between two bus stations, I'm already used to it.
7: How normal....
8: Jinhua Town and Cuqiao Lijiaci are jammed up much worse than this every night. The traffic police can only direct the traffic by abusing these wicked people or even by beating them. I hope that a bureau can dispatch official police to train "leather shoe" folks. They're too savage.
9: The worst are the rickshaws, they don't obey anything, they're always getting fined, now the streets are full of them
10: Chengdu traffic, a local can only say one thing: officials have no plan, the people have no inherent goodness.
11: The past two days I've been stuck in two traffic jams. The day before yesterday was when I was going home from work on the 45 bus. On Guangfu Qiao Jie I was stuck for half an hour, sheesh, it used to be just be a 10-minute drive and now it's more than 40. Last night near Shuinianhe I waited half an hour for the 34 bus, and then five buses in a row came. Sucks.
12: I agree with the above commenter. It's the motor vehicles making the traffic jams. The relevant department should pay more attention to the non-motorized vehicles encroaching upon the motor-vehicle lanes, the motor vehicles running red lights, etc. Anybody breaking the law should be heavily fined (I suggest a fine of RMB100) and at the same time detain the vehicle.
14: Forget it, nowhere in Chengdu has traffic jams, how can those relevant departments have any time to manage this? They don't even have enough time to think about where everybody can go to eat and drink, how could they possibly take any time to bother with the affairs of the small ordinary residents?
15: In the city, just drive an electric bike, don't even try to drive a car
16: Actually, neither the motorized nor the non-motorized vehicles are at fault. The party at fault are the relevant departments for not enforcing any of the rules of the road. And there are more and more cars ...
18: You know, in Singapore, it's always been cars yielding to people, I've never heard of people yielding to cars. Singapore is really people-centric!
20: There are too many people coming into Chengdu from outside the city, it's too crowded if all the people live in Chengdu, the burden on the city is abnormally heavy. No wonder that vegetables and rice are so expensive now, there's no classification of people, everybody just moves right into the city. Now there are more people from outside the city than city locals ...
22: A tragedy I saw the other day: in front of the Beihu bus station there's an intersection, a woman riding on her electric bike rode through some fresh cement and it all sprayed up onto her bike. The bike was changed beyond recognition and the rider was even worse off! No matter if it's people yielding to cars or cars yielding to people, the problem is nobody has safety awareness.
23: Speaking frankly, in Chengdu, most of those driving, walking, riding an electric or pedal bike, and especially those taking Chengdu's taxis, are really annoying. I want to say they're really uneducated but actually they are educated people, so how can this kind of situation occur? My analysis is that it's a fight with time. Actually most people have this inherent goodness, but it's just in order to grab that second, I don't yield to you and you don't yield to me. This competition makes the traffic jam. Everybody think about whether you really need to grab those seconds.
360: Chengdunese are falling into ruins, is it really necessary to drive a car to and from work? So many people live and work inside the city, and still want to drive a car to and from work even though it's so near. How much space does a car take up? If your workplace and your home are that close to each other and you still drive your own car to work I despise you greatly. Ride a bike to and from work. Another thing is I get pissed off when I see those water trucks, they were OK before,
363: It really needs to be taken care of. I spent 30 minutes and RMB15 going from Qinglong Jie to Caoshi Jie, WTF! Chengdu really is a city you can't escape once you arrive [a riff on the city motto of "Chengdu: A City You Don't Want to Leave"]
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This article was posted by Jane and published September 20, 2010
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