

Beginning this Friday afternoon and extending through Monday, traffic in Shanghai is going to descend into gridlock, as it does every year, in order to celebrate our country of residence. From Global Times:

Frequented spots within the downtown core, including the Bund and part of Lujiazui, will be off-limits to cars and trucks for chunks of time from Friday to Monday as Shanghai authorities work to ensure that traffic runs smoothly as the nation’s 62th National Day holiday gets underway.

The vehicles will be prohibited from entering busy pockets of town from 3:30 pm to 11:30 pm from Friday, the day before the holiday officially begins, to Monday, roughly the half-way mark of the seven-day break that ends on October 7.

Leaving aside how ridiculous it is to suggest closing roads helps smooth traffic, we are curious to know who came up with this incredibly overly-long list of road closures:

In Puxi, starting at the intersection of Dongdaming Road and Liyang Road in Hongkou district, vehicles will be banned from the area encircled by Liyang Road, Changzhi Road, Tiantong Road, Qufu Road, Xizang Road, Beijing Road, Chengdu Road, Chongqing Road, Huaihai Road, Renmin Road, Dongmen Road and the Huangpu River.

Couldn’t they just close it off from Suzhou creek? Anyway, to make things easier for you, we utilized our most advanced Paint skillz to roughly illustrate the areas in which you can find a blessed respite from vehicles over the weekend.

Scooters (and bicycles!!) are also supposedly prohibited from Henan Lu to the Bund (bordered by Renmin Lu to the south and Suzhou Lu on the north) and we wish them luck with enforcing that.

The Xizang Lu exit from the Yan’an elevated road will be closed, as will the eastern exit at the junction with the North-South elevated road. Pedestrian over and underpasses will also be closed.

They are also closing the Nanjing East metro stop, the Bund Tourist Tunnel (awww!) and ferries running from Dongchang Road to Jinling Road East might be suspended depending on traffic.

Happy National Day! We, like Shanghai authorities, would like to encourage your boss to let you go home early on Friday to avoid the madness.



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