How to break the high-speed traffic jam
During the Spring Festival holiday this year, the overall traffic volume of Hunan expressway network continued to run at a high level-
How to break the high-speed traffic jam
"It usually takes 6 hours to drive for 22 hours." Since the Spring Festival holiday, "Hunan Expressway Traffic Jam" has frequently boarded the hot search in Weibo.
According to the report released by the provincial highway network operation monitoring and command center, during the Spring Festival holiday for 8 days (from February 10th to February 17th), the total traffic volume at the entrance and exit of expressways in the province was 43.626 million, with an average daily traffic volume of 5.453 million, with an average daily increase of 21.1%. At present, the overall traffic volume of Hunan expressway network is still at a high level, and it is expected that the traffic volume will gradually fall back to the normal level after the fifteenth day of the first month.
How blocked is the Hunan Expressway? Why is it so blocked? How will it be cracked?
East, West, North and South traffic flows through Hunan.
"On the eighth day of the first month, I returned to Changsha from Changde. The map of Gaode showed that Yiyang Expressway was blocked as’ pig liver red’." Yoga Yu, a citizen of Changde, said that even if he got off the expressway and took the national highway, he would leave at 9: 00 that day, and he would not get home until 1: 00 the next morning.
This day is the last day of this year’s Spring Festival holiday, and it is also the last day of the national high-speed free passage. There are more than ten kilometers of congestion in many sections of Hunan Expressway.
The congestion of Hunan Expressway has a lot to do with Hunan’s geographical location.
At present, the expressways in Hunan Province are a expressway network with "seven verticals and seven horizontals" as the backbone, which is connected with six neighboring provinces and cities, and 29 planned inter-provincial expressways have been opened to traffic.
As can be seen from the highway network map of Hunan, the east-west Hangrui Expressway, Shanghai-Kunming Expressway and Quannan Expressway in the "Seven Horizons" and the north-south Beijing-Hong Kong-Macao Expressway, Xuguang Expressway, Wushen Expressway and Erguang Expressway in the "Seven Horizons" all pass through Hunan. During Spring Festival travel rush every year, vehicles from Hubei, Chongqing, Guizhou, Guangxi, Jiangxi and other places to the Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta regions have to pass through Hunan, and the transit traffic is very large.
"Hunan is an important channel connecting the central and western regions of the Yangtze River Delta. A large number of migrant workers go to Guangdong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai, and the return traffic basically passes through Hunan. The traffic pressure on the main line is very high." Zhou Biao, a road condition analyst at the Provincial Highway Network Operation Monitoring Command Center, said that during the period of Spring Festival travel rush, due to the large traffic volume, measures such as temporary control and closing some entrances were taken to control the traffic of toll stations, with the aim of ensuring the passage of the main line.
One or two can be seen from the data. During the eight days of the Spring Festival holiday, the daily average traffic volume of expressways in the province reached 5.453 million, which was 2.37 times of the daily traffic volume, setting a new high. The total traffic volume of the provincial boundary entrances and exits of 29 expressways in the province is 8.051 million vehicles, a record high for inter-provincial traffic.
With the increase of vehicle ownership year by year, the expressway adopts the policy of free passage during major holidays, and the traffic volume of expressway network increases exponentially compared with normal days, which easily leads to slow traffic and congestion.
For example, in the Spring Festival of 2023 (the sixth day), the peak traffic reached 3.34 times of the daily traffic; In the Spring Festival of 2024 (the sixth day), the peak traffic was 6.609 million vehicles, which was 2.87 times of the daily traffic.
The traffic flow of road network far exceeds the design value.
The construction standard of Hunan expressway is not high, and most of them are two-way four-lane sections. For example, the Hunan sections of Beijing-Hong Kong-Macao, Wushen and Erguang expressways connected with Guangdong are all two-way four-lane sections, while the Hunan section of Xuguang Expressway is a two-way six-lane section.
During the Spring Festival holiday this year, the four vertical and four horizontal trunk roads in our province were saturated, and the total traffic of Beijing-Hong Kong-Macao Expressway, Xuguang Expressway, Wushen Expressway, Erguang Expressway, Shanghai-Kunming Expressway, Changzhang Expressway, Hangrui Expressway and Quannan Expressway accounted for 53.51% of the total holiday traffic.
However, in some high-speed traffic peak hours, the traffic flow of the road network far exceeds the design flow.
For example, the Hunan section of Beijing-Hong Kong-Macao Expressway and the Hunan section of Shanghai-Kunming Expressway are both two-way and four-lane, and the designed daily traffic flow is about 25,000 to 55,000 vehicles. However, during the holiday peak hours, the daily traffic flow of these two expressways is 65,000 vehicles, and the daily traffic flow of some easy-to-slow nodes reaches 80,000 vehicles, which is in a state of supersaturation.
"During Spring Festival travel rush, the average daily traffic flow of Xuguang Expressway was 67,000, with a peak of 120,000." Zhou Biao introduced that Xu-Guang Expressway is also operating in supersaturated state. Although it is two-way and six-lane, the designed daily traffic volume is about 45,000 to 80,000 vehicles, but the expressway is two-way and four-lane from Taling Hub to Tieshi Hub. At this node, six lanes are changed to four lanes, which leads to a decline in traffic capacity and is easy to form a traffic bottleneck.
The topography of Hunan is mainly mountainous and hilly, and the proportion of highway bridges and tunnels is high, which is prone to traffic accidents. If it is not handled quickly, the longer the occupation time, the lower the traffic efficiency. According to the statistics of road information, there were 453 traffic accidents on expressways in the whole province during the Spring Festival holiday, accounting for 22.27% of the total number of incidents. The sections where these incidents occur frequently are mainly reflected in several sections with large traffic volume in the province, namely, Beijing-Hong Kong-Macao Expressway, Xuguang Expressway, Erguang Expressway and Changzhang Expressway.
Continue to crack the peak congestion.
In response to high-speed congestion, Hunan’s transportation infrastructure construction continued to exert its strength.
Last year, all four expressways in our province, such as Jingli, Baixin, Zhitong and Guanxin, were opened to traffic. Among them, Jingli Expressway and Zhitong Expressway are both provincial expressways connecting Hunan with Guizhou.
This year, our province will ensure the completion of four expressways with a total length of 261 kilometers, including Hengyong, Yongling, Yuanchen and Bainan, and newly start expansion projects such as Changzhu and Zhulei in Beijing, Hong Kong and Macao.
Beijing-Hong Kong-Macao Expressway is the traffic artery running through the north and south of China, and it is also one of the expressways with the highest passenger flow in Hunan. The Beijing-Hong Kong-Macao Chang-Zhu and Zhu-Lei expansion projects adopt the standard of two-way eight-lane expressway, with a design speed of 120 kilometers per hour, and the future traffic capacity will be greatly improved.
In order to effectively alleviate the traffic pressure between Changsha and Yiyang and Changde, the expansion project of Yiyang-Changde Expressway is under construction. The project has a total length of 93.456 kilometers and adopts the standard of two-way six-lane expressway with a design speed of 120 kilometers per hour. It is expected to open to traffic in 2025. After opening to traffic, it will be connected with the expansion project of Changyi Expressway into a brand-new expressway leading to the northwest of Hunan.
At present, there are two high-speed passages out of Hunan province under construction. One is the Luhongshan (Hunan-Hubei border) to Cili Expressway, which is connected with Hubei Province and is expected to be completed and opened to traffic in June 2025; The other is the Chengbu-Longsheng (Xiangguijie) Expressway, which connects with Guangxi and is expected to be completed and opened to traffic in September 2026.
Hunan’s high-speed rail and aviation hub are accelerating construction, which also shares a lot of passenger flow for high speed. Changyichang high-speed railway was completed and opened to traffic, and Sanxiang land realized high-speed railway ring; Hunan Section of Changchun-Jiangxi High-speed Railway and Shaoyong High-speed Railway started construction one after another, and the high-speed rail channels became more and more abundant. Xiangxi Border Town Airport was opened to navigation, and Xiangxi entered the aviation era; The T3 terminal building of Changsha Airport’s reconstruction and expansion project has been vigorously promoted, with the planned annual passenger throughput of 40 million passengers. In the future, it will become a modern three-dimensional integrated transportation hub with the most connection modes and the highest seamless transfer efficiency in China.
Recently, due to the influence of low temperature, rain, snow and freezing weather, Hunan Expressway is facing greater traffic pressure. How to avoid traffic jams in all transportation departments of our province?
The relevant person in charge of the Provincial Department of Transportation said that the monitoring of road network operation will be strengthened, and the traffic around major cities and the main lines of provincial boundaries will be relatively concentrated and the construction and accident-prone sections will be rebuilt and expanded, and inspections and inspections will be intensified. Establish a linkage mechanism, set up temporary quick handling points for minor accidents in toll stations, service areas and emergency lanes near congested road sections, and deploy mobile emergency charging equipment in some large-flow service areas, arrange special personnel to guide and control the order at the scene, and reduce the waiting time in line.
(Text/Peng Kexin)