Holiday break in China causes massive traffic jams on highways - VIDEO - PHOTO
China is marking a long public holiday — "Golden Week," timed to coincide with the founding anniversary of the People's Republic of China.
During this period, the country's Ministry of Transport expects an incredible travel boom: more than 2.13 billion intercity trips over seven days (nearly 300 million daily).
The vast majority of residents — more than 90% — set out by road, helped by the free travel on toll highways for passenger cars introduced by the authorities.
On the very first day of the holidays, 71 million cars took to the expressways. A real record was registered at the largest 36-lane "Wuzhuang" toll station (on the border of Anhui and Jiangsu provinces): more than 150,000 vehicles passed through it in a single day — effectively two cars per second. A second wave of giant traffic jams is expected on October 6 and 7, when flows of tourists head back home.
