Sunday, 29 August 2010

60 mile long traffic jam on China's highway

Yesterday, I was looking for the easiest news in The New York Times's to blog then I kept a lot the interested news in my favorite. Today, I'm reading every news topics and I found several of interested news. Although a news which catch my eyes most is the one which I've never paid attention with before, actually it totally reflecting to Thailand's transportation. The news is "Refusing to Detour".

As reported in the news, even though China have many highway construction but they still have traffic problem. On the China's Beijing-to-Mongolia highway, there is a gridlock of 60 miles long because the root of the traffic problem is the government and transportation didn't give a cooperate to each other. The highway network operation were managed by the authorities from each city and the tolls in each city is different, some city base on distance, some base on truck's weight but some city base on kind of truck. Although there is a big problem in this highway but the drivers still using this route because in alternate routes is longer than this highway, and the drivers have to pay more tolls because the tolls depend on the distance; moreover, they might be lose their licenses for over the maximum load.

In my opinion, this news have a reflection in Thailand's transportation particularly in trucks . They are almost always over weight containing the product which you can see easily on the road and our government try to be silent. The accident can happen in everyday life by this kind of truck. For example, wheels can not hold over weight so its can explode everyday. Therefore, in order to get the solution, the government should be serious to this kind of truck more than ever.
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References
Zhan Guo. (2010, August 27). Refusing to Detour. The New York Times. Retrieved August 29, 2010 from http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2010/8/26/redefining-bumper-to-bumper/refusing-to-detour-on-chinas-jammed-up-highway

4 comments:

  1. Net,
    I read a similar report on the BBC News, where the impressive headline, something like "60 mile grid-lock" very effectively caught my attention.

    I like the way you relate the report on China's problem to the Thai social and political context. When you say " the government should be serious", what, specifically, do you think the Thai government should do to tackle the local problems caused by overweight trucks?

    ReplyDelete
  2. In Thailand, corrupt country, full of bribery, I can't change the whole system of transportation; however, if I'm a authority and my duty relate to transportation, I will make new rule to command seriously about overweight trucks. The rule should be strong enough to frighten them. For example, ban the company which let the overweight trucks run on the road for one year. In my opinion, I'm still believe that mostly of people don't need themselves run into the problem which they can't solve by themselves so if the law strong enough, the crime will be decreased. Besides; mostly people are selfish and do any things that they want and they've never known that several things that they've done usually have an effect to others, so I think it's time to pay attention to others feeling more than ever. Like Thais say "เอาใจเขามาใส่ใจเรา". Today, people rarely care other people, differently from when I was a childhood.



    I've 100% believed that , if we don't have law, our society will run to the hell. I don't care if their immoral behavior didn't cause an effect to others but normally they did, so we should restructure the law make it stronger than ever before, because when people going to do something wrong, no manner or selfish and have an effect to other they going to deny to do it. In Thai, we have a kind of idiom say "วัวหายล้อมคอก" it means after the bad thing’d happened, we just made the rule to protect it.

    Sorry for out of your question. I just want to release.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Net (August 29, 2010 4:14 PM),
    I agree with you that Thailand is a corrupted country, full of bribery; but, I don't think changing the law can make any improvement. In my opinion, Thailand's problems are based on "corrupted country, full of bribery". Although, the law is very strict, the people who enforce the law can be bribed, that make no difference. I think we must improve enforcement system, and our people to level that they can understand the important of the law before changing the law, and get many more ways of corruption.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Math
    In your last paragraph, do you mean the government should make citizen understand law clearly ?

    I agree if you mean that but I still insist that make the law stronger and remind the citizens that every seconds of their lives living under the law.

    I have an easy example, long time ago, in Thailand we have a law, people who cross the road which place is not provided for, they have to pay money for that so at that time I rarely saw people cross in the wrong place.

    Finally, I still think that restructure the laws can make our country be better.

    ReplyDelete

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