China 1
Who would have thought? Nearly 20 years ago one saw from the West almost all Chinese on bicycles, to see little of car traffic. One wondered how long would the Chinese need to come to a mobility comparable to the
West.
| Beijing: 1,900 newly registered cars per day |
One never thought possible what is there now a reality. As in the narrow maze of streets even of big cities did not fit broad streets, in some places one has decided for a system of elevated roads much faster than expected.
But which are now already used to capacity that the average speed is now less than it was with the bicycle.
The threshold for affordability of a car has been achieved by many Chinese, also because thereby the generation of grandparents may still make a contribution. And it explicitly should be a car, thus individual locomotion.
Even though the streets congest more and more. At first glance it seems to be that China exactly repeat the mistakes, which were made also in more developed countries with the gain of mobility.
But there are public local and long-distance traffic. In addition to the aircraft even a 300 km/h fast train connection eg between Beijing and Shanghai. Just like the maglev the technology comes from Germany and this
creates even more than 400 km/h. But all the good is not much, if with long distances the offer of seats is not enough.
By the way in rural areas of China it looks significantly worse. Here you can watch the other side of the growing gap between rich and poor. Travel takes place in decrepit regional trains. Roads and paths are bad, just as
partly vehicles. Here one is stopped in the period of horse-drawn vehicles.
The road construction does a lot, but is not able to do anything about the huge area, 27 times of Germany, nearly as much as USA or Canada. Although of course a large part of China consist of sandy desert, a further
problem, the road construction has to struggle with. Because it threatens sanding-up of the beautiful new roads which are impassable thus. 08/12
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