Thursday, August 26, 2010

You think you have it bad


When I was a kid and I did not finish my vegetables, my parents would always remind me of the poor children starving in other parts of the world. Well now, parents who have children who complain about how long it takes to drive somewhere can say, "You are lucky you are not a child stranded in the 60+ mile traffic jam in China."
It appears China's new love affair with the auto combined with truck traffic has resulted in a 10-day traffic jam that may span into September. The WSJ reports that businesses popped up along the route to take advantage of the captive audience, and law enforcement was out in force to quell the unrest.
We in the United States have never experienced such a thing, and I hope we never will, but we certainly have felt the negative impact of our own love affair with the car, and it has resulted in new thinking around the way we develop and move around. For example, we have embraced mixed use developments that support alternative forms of transportation. The Chinese have their own ideas, and you can read about them here.

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