More Crazy Intersections & Traffic Jams

"QUANTUM SHOT" #701 Link - by Avi Abrams The only thing that helps while stuck in traffic is knowing that somewhere others have it worse This page will come as a stress-reliever for many - seeing how others are also battling horrid commute traffic jams and ridiculously complex interchanges every day. We covered this topic before - see Part 1 and Part 2, but new material has recently come out (it would, wouldn't it?), and so we feel obliged to give you another portion of commuting nightmares. Still the winner here is this urban roadways "spaghetti factory" - in Los Angeles, of course - the City Built for Cars (and some people): (Highways #5 and #1, photos by Edward Burtinsky) Another weird one in LA can be found here... Traffic Jams, Spreads and Jellies ... and marmalades, too! Here is Romanian morning commute: (bottom right: morning traffic jam on the bridge Hua Yuan in Chongqing, China; photo by Olli Geibel/ AFP) Who goes first?? - (top: Peking traffic, photo AP - bottom right photo by Nelly Shishmayan, Armenia) Inside cars / outside cars: (Muslims returning home after a three-day religious festival in Raivinde, India; photo by Arif Ali/AFP) (images via) Waiting in traffic is part of life in Moscow (where delays takes on average about two and a half hours): (images via) Right under the walls of Kremlin in Moscow unfolds this "left turn/ right turn" drama: nobody knows who actually has the right of way - (images via) Some horrid commuting delays occur in Beijing, Mexico City, Johannesburg and New Delhi... but the worst traffic jam on record happened in France between Lyon and Paris, stretching for 109 miles on February 16, 1980. (pretty chaotic traffic in Dhaka, Bangladesh; photo by Minur Ur Zaman/ AFP) Was there not enough space in the van?! - (a family tries to evacuate the flooded areas Novshery; photo by Daniel Berehulak /Getty Images) Plenty of time to get acquainted with your neighbour: (in this case, these are taxi drivers lined up at the Shanghai Airport; photo China Photos / Getty Images) Some of the traffic is exacerbated by complicated multilevel interchanges (which work well when they're designed well - see for example, Awesome Interchanges in Japan): The location of this line-up seems to be Road 20, Ayalon Highway in Israel: (image via) Traffic chaos obviously happens in any climate: hot or forbiddingly cold, like this appalling line-up in the middle of a harsh Moscow winter (right): Achieve ZEN, right there in this traffic... Stay calm, breathe deep: The only occasion when "Are we there yet?" (or even "Are we moving yet?") question actually means something Are they actually going any where? Are they making any progress? My wife and I experienced something like that while trying to get to Lake Geneva (the one in Wisconsin, not Switzerland). Turns out, thousands of other summer-struck families from Chicago had the same general idea... Whatever that rural retreat place is, it must be pretty good to endure all this waiting: (a road near Cayenne after the closure of the bridge Larivot; photo by Judy Amiet/ AFP) ------- Room for Improvement One solution would be to buy a Vespa scooter: This tongue-in-cheek drawing illustrates what modern urban centers often look like: (original unknown) Why don't they spice our traffic commute with something like this? (see more crazy NL Architects projects here): (image via) Another funny look on traffic below and the clear empty interchange "sky" above: (original unknown) Famous comic artist XKCD has a few solutions of his own - click here. Allow me, however, to finish with this inspiring concept from the Communist Youth Soviet magazine Tekhnika Molodezhi, circa 1974: a beautiful visionary image of a "perfect" multilevel interchange: (image credit: Tehnika Molodezhi, click to enlarge) READ THE OTHER PART OF THIS ARTICLE Share Tweet