Chinese pikes

China has the second greatest length of motorway after the US according to transport consultant and inveterate data collector Wendell Cox (publicpurpose.com). Using mostly IRF data he ranks motorway length by thousands of km: US 92, China 24, Germany 11, France 10, Spain 9, Italy 9, Mexico 6, Canada 6, Japan 6, UK 3, Holland 3, S Korea 2, S Africa 2, Ukraine 2, Turkey 2, Belgium 2, Austria 2. Now wait, that seems incomplete. Brazil, Argentina, Russia, Poland, Malaysia, Taiwan, India, Pakistan and Australia should be in here somewhere? Is the Ukraine really ahead of them?

China’s roads are difficult to get coherent information about, so unfortunately, we don’t bring you much on them. Some of them sound as though they may be in deep financial trouble. The WALL STREET JOURNAL (1/29/01 p1) reports that China’s new motorways, almost all pikes are “sleek and empty - costly treats for the tiny minority of people (in China) who own cars” – which is about the population of Montgomery county Maryland, of Edinburgh Scotland, or Melbourne north of the Yarra?

Actually the rationale for Chinese toll roads has been, not private cars, but trucking. With an enormous and burgeoning light manufacturing industry – half the gadgetry Americans buy these days seem to be made in China – it depends increasingly heavily on trucking. Motorways are needed for trucks to avoid the clutter of slow modes such as animal and farm-tractor drawn vehicles on the general roads.

But the WSJ reports that the 1,250km (780mi) $4.7b Jinghu Expressway, Beijing to Shanghai, opened last December and is barely used. The toll for a car is $70. It says the road has ramps which go nowhere. Lacking underpasses for their livestock, abutting farmers have cut gaps in the pike’s fencing to herd sheep and goats across at grade.

Maybe with such small traffic volumes what they need rather than conventional 2x2-lane motorways is a more basic 1x2-lane motorway with passing sections, and access control. And plenty of large culverts for the goats!