Worst of all if I were there I’d have just said “Not to worry, there’s a restroom just across the border.”
I dont know a lot about roadway dynamics,and what i do know probably is hindered by my lack of direct knowledge of this road in particular and China’s roads in general. But it strikes me as incredibly odd to have 50 lanes inbound and only 4 out. … that means this is a parking lot, or more accurately a “queueing lot”, and this is not news since it’s then doing exactly what it was built to do. Still seems really wierd to need FIFTY lanes one way and only 4 the other…
Now that the 635 express lanes are complete, bet there are some cool youtube videos of hooligans making runs through them somewhat in excess of the posted limit.
I am pretty sure that these lanes are at a border crossing and based on the date of when the video was posted it is at the end of the ‘Golden Week’ where EVERYONE in China travels to go see family that live far away. It is a whole week long holiday so people can travel.
The lanes are bi-directional so they change the direction of the lanes based on traffic. Imagine the traffic if there were 27 lanes leaving the city with only 4 lanes of traffic in them. 
Wow. That would not be the place to start your morning off with a cup of coffee and a bran muffin.
I hate the thoughts of Tollways but 635 is amazing now and well worth it. I made it from TI blvd to I-35 going triple digits the whole way. and I was in a car. I rather not be too specific on times and speeds. Regular traffic was literally bumper to bumper. my Gpus showed my trip taking ~48 minutes. Now I know what teleportation feels like.
On motorcycles is even more fun/fast, because there is no where for cops to stop and read speeds. Private roads should have at least one perk, and that is speed.
…X…
Border crossing at Shenzen/Hong Kong was my first thought also, but it’s near Beijing, not border crossing there. Probably a toll road.
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I don’t believe I would still be on the road. Where were going we don’t need roads. I guess the the Jeep side of me though.
Traffic in China is the way it is because much of the population went from a mostly bicycle culture to an automotive one in a decade or maybe two.
A new perspective on toll roads: whenever I am in Oklahoma or Kansas, I use the turnpikes. The alternative is a poor cowpath in most places and the levy is reasonable.
I get 20 miles per gallon on the highway. The toll is on the order of 5 cents for a mile. I view that as an additional tax of a dollar on a gallon of gas.
I refuse to use the toll roads around here unless I absolutely have to. Tolls are now well over 15 cents for a mile, making it more than 3 dollars per gallon for me. Most of the drivers who use them are paying more than twice as much for the toll than the fuel. Put that in your tank and smoke it…
Edit: some of you are aware that Interstate 30 between the CBDs of Dallas and Fort Worth used to be a turnpike. The construction bonds were paid off early and the highway became free. Only a few odd interchanges give away its lineage.
The current toll roads use a different system. I do not expect to ever see these go free.
No, they generate revenue for the rather permanent NTTA. There’s always a new project (and never-ending maintenance), thus they’re never going to shut down. The failure to build roads from general revenues - and raise taxes in the process - is why the toll road administrators like the NTTA step in and build these roads, or more recently add-ons.
Well, no, since Cintra (a Spanish company) has a 99-year lease to collect the tolls on DNT.
http://www.landlinemag.com/Story.aspx?StoryID=24861#.VhlCU_m6fcs
No, they are not intended to ever ‘pay off anything’.
When I 30 was funded by tolls, the vast majority of our roadway infrastructure was paid for with federal revenue provided through gas taxes. For much of the time we have had gas taxes (say 50’s to early 80’s) these revenues from those taxes were well in excess of the costs associated with building and maintaining roads. States learned to rely on federal funding (which was provided from the revenue collected by gas tax) to pay for these roads.
Over time, politicians and others decided that we needed to use this same funding source to pay for things in addition to roads for cars. Initially it was transit (bus, rail, etc…). The argument was that these services ‘reduced’ the demand for new roads. However, these services are much more costly on a per trip basis and not only did we need to pay for the construction of these facilities, but most of their operational costs as well.
In other words we paid for roads and their maintenance, but we expected end users to provide their own vehicle and its fuel and maintenance. With transit we paid for a much greater percentage of the trip cost. At the same time we started using the gas tax to pay for these additional items (without increasing the tax revenue), we pass legislation that gradually increased the fuel efficiency of vehicles and hence reduced the revenue produces from a gas tax for a given distance traveled. In other words, we lowered the rate we were taxing per mile traveled, and we started using those tax revenues for a number of additional things.
The end result is that we as a nation have cut corners by reducing the amount of money we spend on our transportation infrastructure. The result is that a majority of the bridges in this country are considered ‘in need’ of maintenance. Here is an example of a bridge crossing on Mockingbird Rd in Dallas to illustrate the problem. This is the pier of one of the supports for the bridge.
So, we reduced effective spending on maintaining (and building) the transportation system. We continued to grow and hence need MORE roads. The politicians have made it clear they don’t want to be blamed for raising the gas tax so they shifted the source of income to tolling.
In many ways tolling is fairer then the gas tax, since it a more direct user fee then gas. After all someone driving a electric car pays zero part of the gas tax, while someone driving an SUV pays much more. Yet the they both have about the same impact on the road (capacity consumed, and damage caused).
So then we looked at toll revenues. Many roads can not be tolled for a variety of legal and practical reasons, so those that are having their revenue used not simply to pay of the debt for creating the toll facility, but to provide funds to build and maintain other facilities within the geographic area.
It boils down to infrastructure needs money to keep it maintained for it falls apart. Even with the toll funding we are hopelessly behind on needed maintenance because the funding isn’t there to pay for it. We have already had a few minor bridge collapses in this country, yet the primary reasons for those are not really being discussed.
On a final note, because of its size, Texas is in a unique problem position. Just the Dallas District of TxDOT has a coverage area (and corresponding budget) as over half of the entire state Department of Transportations in the US.
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The express lanes are so worth every penny! I may or may not be one of those people going somewhat in excess of the speed limit 
Did anyone see any lane dividers in that video? Pretty orderly but how?
Lilith I was thinking the same thing!
'n yeah… I pulled up the video again today and was still like… wow. 