New | Beijing sees 55km-long traffic jam as tourists flock in for May Day holiday

The long-awaited May Day holiday has arrived, but hundreds of thousands of commuters across the nation who were eager to enjoy their time off were instead stalled by heavy traffic snarls.

Massive streams of people going in and out of Beijing yesterday caused major congestion in China’s capital, as the nation kick-started the three-day public holiday.

As tourists flocked in on cars and buses, some 470,000 vehicles were recorded travelling out of Beijing on various highways yesterday morning, the Legal Evening News said, as citydwellers headed towards suburban tourist resorts, making traffic much worse than normal. 

The worst traffic jam was on the Beijing-Tibet expressway, where cars heading out of town have been stuck since Thursday morning, and the queue was a staggering 55 kilometres long, the report said.

The Beijing-Hong Kong-Macau Expressway, southwest of the capital, saw a 26-kilometre-long queue of cars. A section bound for Chengde, a popular leisure destination, had a 21-kilometre backlog.

The Beijing Municipal Commission of Transport estimated that daily traffic capacity could top a record-breaking two million cars on all roads in the capital during the holiday.