1,000-Kilometer-Long 7th Ring Road Opens to the Public
By the end of this month, the entirety of the Seventh Ring Road – officially the China Motorway 95 (G95) or the Capital Ringway – will be open to the public, in a move which sees Beijing further consolidate its position as a ballooning metropolis. Every section of the near 1,000-kilometer-long highway has now opened except the Changping expressway which is still undergoing final touches. Although only 38 kilometers lie within the borders of Beijing, planners hope it will ease traffic on the outer ring roads, particularly on the East Sixth, where the Seventh Ring Road skirts nearby.
The Seventh Ring Road stretches far out of Beijing
Compared to the 220-kilometer-long Sixth Ring Road, this new highway connects 13 satellite cities, including Hebei's Zhangjiakou, Zhuozhou, and Langfang. It also provides a direct "express" route from Tongzhou to Beijing's new airport in Daxing, due to open in late 2019, connecting the two previously poorly connected districts in the east and south, respectively.
Final touches are still being applied in the Changping section of the expressway
Despite the mammoth operation and incredible turnaround time (the final proposals were greenlit in April of last year), it wouldn't be a Beijing construction project without a few little quirks. In typical 'Jing fashion, English typos appear on signage at the Hebei section of the Beijing-Qinhuangdao Motorway, now serviced by the Seventh Ring Road, designating lanes as the "Carring Way" and highlighting China's seemingly neverending struggle with correct English signage.
Beijing's spellchecker technology has yet to catch up with its infrasture abilities
Of the new road, China transport hobbyist and expert David Feng, who drove the Beijing sections of the new Seventh Ring Road earlier this week, told the Beijinger: "We are too tempted to dismiss this as a ringway we never needed, but in all honesty, it will be a relief route for all heavy goods vehicles (lorries)," adding that wider implications of the ring road mean that, "the Seventh might be more symbolically important to the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei integration plans. Of course, the management is a mess with different signage norms in use in the Beijing section and the Hebei section, and so on."
We are too tempted to dismiss this as a ringway we never needed, but in all honesty, it will be a relief route for all heavy goods vehicles.
For many of us, the Seventh Ring Road will never even cross our paths but instead stands as an ambitious reminder that the city we live in is growing outwards far faster than the daily construction in the center hints at.
Photos: South China Morning Post (scmp.com), China Daily (via ecns.cn), CCTV.com
Do you have what it takes to be a True Runner?
Scan/Extract the QR code above to check out our current job openings.
Want to know what awesome events are happening in town? Scan/Extract the QR code above to get the list of our Editors' Picks.
Got something to sell? Looking for a job? Or probably your soulmate? Then scan/extract the QR code above to visit our Classified Ads.
Always something fresh
Scan/Extract the QR code above to follow us!
Tap on the cover to access the latest print issue.