Well I'll be Jammed!

I apologize for the delay in this post, as I have just recently returned from Beijing where my services were required. It is not often that a call gets put in to my signal from overseas, so this was a trip that I just had to take. I was sitting at home working my gridlock puzzles when I noticed my signal change from green to red (after going through the appropriate clearance interval of course). I quickly checked which detector unit the call was coming from, and realized that this situation was serious. I knew things on the home front were good since I placed a 10 second delay on the international detectors and have the domestic phase set to green rest, yet the call still came through. I have never been to China, but since 1/6 of the world lives there, I figured it must be a good place so I decided to scramble Traffic Calmer One and make the trip. And man was I glad I did. They have a serious case of congestion over there, and the best sinus medicine in the world isn’t going to fix this problem, the best traffic engineer… maybe.

The situation: What started because of construction and was further fueled by broken down vehicles quickly grew into a 60 mile traffic jam. Stop; reread the last sentence just to make sure you got it. Yes, 60 miles--hard to believe I know--but I encourage you to search for the story on your favorite world news website. I was asked to do several interviews while I was over there, so my name and/or quotes should be thrown in the story as well.

Construction on the Beijing-Tibet highway initiated a traffic jam that began on August 14th and caused officials to estimate it may take vehicles in back of the traffic jam 9 days to get out. Again, pause, reread the last sentence and think about the last time you spent 9 days in a traffic jam. If all of that isn’t bad enough, construction is scheduled to continue through September 17th. The situation still isn’t all that bad you are saying? Well consider this: local food vendors are jacking their prices way up to sell to those motorist stuck on the road.

The biggest complaint trapped motorist have is that locals are riding their bikes up and down the highway selling bottled water for $1.50. Can you believe that, they are charging a whole dollar and a half? The nerve. If I were a driver stuck there that would be my biggest complaint too. To be fair though, that is ten times the normal cost of a bottle of water in Beijing. That’s the bad news.

The good news, while it may or may not be related to my services, is that the longest any one single car has taken to travel those 60 miles is five days, four less than what was expected. That is cruising at a dangerously high speed of 0.5 mph. Anyway, I surveyed the situation (surveyed as in examined… I don’t want to be confused with a P.S.) and did what I could before coming back to solving the traffic problems of west-central Ohio.

So the next time you are sitting in a traffic jam (possibly at Malfunction Junction), I want you to think about two things:

1) At least I won’t be here for 5 days.
2) M. John could fix this problem.