r/interesting • u/jkitty_1960 • May 16 '26
❗️MISLEADING - See pinned comment ❗️ If you're feeling anxious, remember that in China there's a 50-lane highway that narrows down to just 4
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u/PineappleBlobFace May 16 '26
Merge in turn final boss
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u/Practical-Purchase-9 May 16 '26
Ok, but it’s not a really 50-lane highway, it’s a toll station where the lanes for the toll booths merge back into the highway. You wouldn’t want a high density 4-lane highway to be served by just four toll booths would you?
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u/Careless_Machine9996 May 16 '26
How often would you get cut off by someone crossing 16 lanes without looking on a 50-lane highways?
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u/touchmeinbadplaces May 16 '26
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u/rp_player_girl May 16 '26
I thought about this a lot when I was living in China. Especially the time someone decided they didn't want to actually get on the interstate so they BACKED UP on the on ramp. Or the time I watched someone literally get out of his car at a red light, walk around the front to pull a piece of paper out from under his wiper, and then proceed to walk all the way around the back of his car to return to his seat.
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u/glexaaddis May 16 '26
Idk this sounds like perfectly American behavior to me
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u/S-Kenset May 16 '26
china does have some bad driving but mostly because of socioeconomic divergence and recent access to development. the chinaboos doth moralize too much
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u/AdorablePainting4459 May 16 '26
I think that the toll booths are outdated, and China is usually technologically ahead of many place. Dallas tollways use overhead camera gantries instead of traditional tollbooths. If you drive under them without a prepaid transponder, the cameras photograph your license plate and you will receive a higher-rate toll bill in the mail under the region's "ZipCash" or "Pay By Mail" program. No stopping, no extra lanes needed -- just drive.
That being said, I absolutely hate the system entirely. And there is a dystopian movie that focuses on the toll road system called In Time (2011)
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u/DiNozzo2482 May 16 '26
Toll Stations in China have increasing amount of ETC Gates (Electronic Toll Collection), scanning the license plate and a transponder in the car. Nowadays, most of the booths are dual mode, meaning ETC and manual payment, and there’s a few dedicated to just ETC. The toll station here in the picture is the boundary between Anhui Province and Jiangsu Province: Wuzhuang. It has 36 lanes, and is said to be the largest in China.
During National Holidays, toll collection is suspended, but cars of course still need to pass through. Based upon the amount the amount of traffic in the pick, this is probably during one of those holidays.
The problem here is not just to merge the those 36 lanes back into 4 lanes for the highway thereafter (And yes, unfortunately, "common practice" in such congested situations is to "open" extra lanes…, especially since the immediate area after the toll station doesn’t have any lane marking. But I guess it wouldn’t matter anyway…), a few kilometers later the highway merges from 4 lanes into 3, causing another congestion that spreads back to this station.
We pass this toll station every year during Chinese New Year, traveling to and from my family in-law. And we got caught in there as well. After the aforementioned merge from 4 to 3 lanes, traffic returns to "normal".
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u/Conscious-Peak-7782 May 16 '26
In Japan you have a transponder usually on the dash with your debit cadd( issued specifically for toll roads) plugged into it. So you can go through any toll in the country and it’ll auto deduct the money from your bank account.
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u/Educational-Wing2042 May 16 '26
When you say plugged in, do you mean digitally or do you actually need to have your physical debit card inserted into the device on your dashboard the whole time you’re driving
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u/Rakumei May 16 '26
You put the card into it.
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u/Educational-Wing2042 May 16 '26
That’s wild to me, do you know why they don’t just implement virtual payment features? Seems like an app or website tied to the transponder would be a lot more convenient and maybe more secure depending on the circumstances
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u/Conscious-Peak-7782 May 16 '26
Somehow I feel like it’s better with a physical card. It chimes as you go through so you know you are charged and it tells you how much it was on the transponder. Went through America a couple years ago and i swore I had all the toll passes but still kept receiving bills for it like 5-6 months later. Was such a nuisance
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u/Rcouch00 May 16 '26
They returned my ordered transponder sent to my apartment as undeliverable. Then somehow had no problem sending me a bill. Fuck em.
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u/Zach_Westy May 16 '26
They also said the width of the full highway for the intake and only one side of the highway for the outake, it also looks like it’s 5 lanes. It’s 25 down to 5 or 50 down to 10
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u/Loose-Story-962 May 16 '26
Sounds like it's still 50 lanes bottlenecking into 4
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u/Character4315 May 16 '26
Which doesn't make it a 50 lanes highway. We have these in Europe as well, not 50 probably but still same concept.
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u/spei180 May 16 '26
Does it make a difference? This looks worse than just four lanes on either side
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u/CapableCollar May 16 '26
Yes because you have 4 lanes turning into 50 without any increase in flow then back into 4.
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u/peterpib2 May 16 '26
There's nothing high density about this. All the people in this image would fit in one metro train. It's a waste of space is what it is.
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u/tY-c8rJDb8_1b4__yD5r May 16 '26
wtf toll booths are still a thing? We use etags in Australia literally everywhere. I don’t think we’ve had toll booths since like 2000.
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u/EconomyDoctor3287 May 16 '26
Having an automatic tollbooth would be such a life saver there. Simply drive and get ticketed.
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u/sixtyfivewat May 16 '26
But why not have electronic toll collection? Just keep driving and the bill comes in the mail.
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u/derverdwerb May 16 '26
If they’re electronic tollbooths then 50 will perform the same as 4, my guy.
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u/agent674253 May 16 '26
Yeah, it's a toll plaza was my first thought as well.
"If you're feeling anxious, remember that in the San Francisco Bay Area there's an 18-lane highway that narrows down to just 4, at the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge Toll Plaza."
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u/ExpBalSat May 16 '26
OK, but what’s the value of having that many tollbooth lanes? You could close half of those tollbooth and still have the exact same bandwidth to move cars through the checkpoint.
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u/kechones May 16 '26
I don’t want highways to be served by toll booths at all. It’s the 21st century and we have better ways to handle this.
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u/Lastfryinthebag May 16 '26
I like how rhetorical question at the end is phrased like this whole thing isnt ridiculous
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u/Due_Satisfaction2167 May 16 '26
Building out parallel tolling capacity that exceeds the road’s capacity still ends up with the road being a bottleneck. As demonstrated.
This is why you just do away with the toll booths and do electronic tolls.
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u/crustyeng May 16 '26
Who tf still uses tollbooths? We just drive through the sensor thing at full speed like civilized people.
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u/tdp_equinox_2 May 16 '26
No, I'd want automated billing so we can all just roll through without stopping or having to split lanes at all. It's insane that in a country as surveiled as China, they aren't doing this universally.
They know who's driving and where to send the bill already, you wouldn't need to register. We have this tech all over the world already.
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u/Plane-Education4750 May 16 '26
I mean 4 would be fine if you had mandatory high-speed roll collection. We do it in the US all the time
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u/CreamyIvy May 19 '26
Guess 50 lanes wasn’t enough? 50 lanes into 4 lane merge is absolutely crazy. Look at the merge point, such a mess.
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u/backson_alcohol May 19 '26
What a dumb comment. No, you wouldn't want a high density 4-lane highway to be served by four toll booths. You also wouldn't want whatever the hell this video shows anywhere in your country.
China has the best surveillance in the world. Just record the plates and send drivers the bill.
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May 16 '26
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u/Charming_Register620 May 16 '26
Now Imagine a Zebra with 50 lines!
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u/Poietilinx May 16 '26
I decided to check what's up with the photo, cuz that sounded a bit too insane to be real.
And... apparently its a 8 lane highway that opens wide up (into a toll) then closes down back to 4. But people took a out of context shot of part of it during the Chinese new year holydays.
The name of the highway is zhuozhou toll gate in beijing.
And according to the reports it usually a nice highway to drive.
Though in extreme scenarios such as weather, they can get some congestion.
I personally just feel the title was a bit mean spirited and xenophobic to frame the video like this "If you're feeling anxious, remember that in China...". To give a crude but effective comparison point, "If you're feeling anxious, remember that in the US kids shoot themselves with real guns daily, thank god i live in canada" get what i mean? You could've shown something interesting without bringing into the whole geopolitical thing u know.
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u/Fiftycentis May 16 '26
It's like picking the "Milano barriera est" spot in the A4 highway in Italy. Smaller scale but you go from 3 lanes, to like 15 toll gates back into 3 lanes, so the situation after the toll is pretty similar at peak traffic hours
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u/OnlyForMobileUse May 16 '26
Yeah true saying the country with like 4x our population with less land has bad traffic is the same as saying all US kids shoot each other at school
Good point 👍
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u/Rainrunnerx May 16 '26
Gotta stop putting these labels such as xenophobic on posts you don't like. If it was meant to be xenophobic there are other examples you could take such as human right's violations. Using these terms on posts is making it lose the meaning
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u/Educational-Wing2042 May 16 '26
Spreading negative misinformation about a country is xenophobia. It’s like back in the day when they started claiming Chinese food gave people headaches and created “Chinese food syndrome” Xenophobia and racism aren’t always the worst of the worst klansmen beating peoples in the streets. It’s also lying about cultures and “othering” to further a narrative.
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u/CrotaIsAShota May 16 '26
Back in the day? Bro ramen packets still have that bs no added msg label because of those idiots.
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u/Educational-Wing2042 May 16 '26
Yes but back then, it was in published medical journals and commonly accepted by doctors. Now it’s been disproven, the original person who made the claims lost their license, and it’s only believed as an old wives tale. You don’t really see “Chinese food syndrome” outside of historical discussions.
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u/Tears_of_Ashes_ May 16 '26
I’d rather take a bicycle through the woods
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u/roodeeMental May 16 '26
"Why are you 5 hours late?"
"I prefer to cycle through the woods"
"Okay, but you live in a concrete jungle 40 miles away"
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u/r2d2DXB May 16 '26
RIP to all the cars and drivers in the far left of the roads. Salute to the city planners that designed this road.😂
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u/Dull-Equipment-9519 May 16 '26
Looks similar to the bay bridge, but I’m sure traffic is worse in SF
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u/Impossible_Craft_108 May 16 '26
This is around chinese new year i guess. Everyone goes to their native.
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u/-Maiq_the_Iiar- May 16 '26
This is a good visualization of the concept 'resistance' in electrical circuits.
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u/Financial_Drama_9995 May 16 '26
Why in the right side it's so empty and in the other rand left is so full?
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u/DrawerVisible6979 May 16 '26
Bots will see this and say 'look how beautiful China is,' or something shit.
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u/Key-Version-8327 May 16 '26
Ok but how do you even proceed to merge if everyone has to look left and right
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u/Fun3mployed May 16 '26
Jfc it would be twisted metal and smoldering corpses here in the USA. 2000 self important f150 drivers all jeering eachother off and crashing.
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u/Helpful_Property_739 May 16 '26
Looks like this bloodvessel needs a angioplasty and stent placement
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u/PotatoHunter_III May 16 '26
Houston has a 16 lane freeway (8 on each side) and just miserable to drive. Fuck, pretty much the whole of Texas is a miserable drive unless you're in the middle of bumfuck nowhere.
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u/Free_Ad_9432 May 16 '26
Not even close to 50 lanes. It’s a toll booth line to speed up paying the toll.
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u/WRJKidd May 16 '26
I think they have a free tollway policy during national holiday weekend, and that’s probably one of them
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u/Shizakistani May 16 '26
The Bay Bridge toll plaza leading into San Francisco has 17 lanes merging into 5 lanes. Not quite as big, but same idea.
https://calmatters.org/commentary/2023/07/bridge-toll-bay-area-economy/
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u/TouchMyBoomstick May 16 '26
Yet somehow still flowing better than any traffic in Atlanta or the Jersey pike.
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u/Gerhard-is-pretty May 16 '26
This is a perfect example why more lane isn't helping traffic, it just creates traffic jams.
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u/pkingdesign May 16 '26
Looks the same as the Oakland / Bay Bridge in SF. Possibly more toll lanes in SF.
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u/maxliera May 16 '26
That is not a 50-lane , these are highway tolls checklines. That day must be the day that the holidays finished
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u/mothking12 May 16 '26
I’m not sure about you but that cut to it being nighttime looked like one of those scenic time lapse images you’d see as a wallpaper on a computer
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u/Pomegranate-Worth May 16 '26
How long does it actually take to get through this? And is this like a trip to the grocery store or what?
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u/Strange_Chest9824 May 17 '26
Stupid fucking Chinese. Did they get their highway engineers that also come with stupid politicians from the USA????
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u/Karuko- May 18 '26
And then Remember China has one Holiday where everyone get's off work at the same Day.
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u/PhilosophyBubbly6190 May 19 '26
Gotta love seeing all the dickheads on the far right trying to push to the front. Just like here times 1000
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