Living in the slow lane: China accidentally builds flats in path of new highway... then has to cut road in HALF

Blundering Chinese officials were forced to cut a motorway in half to go around a block of flats after they accidentally erected the building in its proposed path then realised it would cost too much to relocate the tenants.

Construction workers had to squeeze the eight-lane highway into four and subsequently left furious residents stuck in the middle of a busy road.

They had just been moved from their previous homes to make way for a park so refused to move again unless they were heavily compensated.

So the council decided to save a small fortune by leaving the flats in place.

Town planning disaster: Chinese officials were forced to cut this motorway in half to go around a block of flats after the building was accidentally erected in its path before the road was built

Construction crisis: The council found it would be much cheaper just to reduce the number of lanes on the road than try to compensate the residents in the flats for having to move them Resident Shing Su, who lives in the block in Xi’an, Shaanxi province in western China, said: 'We all lived in another area where they were building the Daming National Heritage Park and they promised to put us up in a new, modern block of flats, so we ended up here. 'But we had only been here a few months when they found that they had built one block too many, and that it was on the place where there was supposed to be a new highway.' RELATED ARTICLES Previous

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Next Gambler thrown from 11th floor window for not paying up... Hundreds of thousands evacuated as Typhoon Fitow hits China,... Share this article Share The council then started negotiations with the tenants, but with their new, modern flats they wanted even more compensation, and after several months of failed negotiations, the council simply gave up and built around the problem. But the road has been branded a waste of time and money as it has done little to solve the problem of rush-hour congestion that it was designed to solve. Fuming: Residents in the block say they are less than impressed with having to live in the middle of a road