National Trunk Highway System (China)

China is about halfway done building the largest expressway system in the world, and it’s done so at a feverish pace over the last 25 years to keep up with the rise of the automobile as the country - and the world - has shifted away from a rail-based transportation system. The first expressway within the National Trunk Highway System, as it’s called, opened in 1988 and today, just 26 years later, the system is over 65,000 miles long. In the ten years since 2004, the network has tripled in length. Each year, China’s now building new expressways equivalent in length to the distance of going coast-to-coast and back in the United States. The Chinese system exceeded the total length of the US interstate highway system back in 2011. This crazy expansion has happened because the Chinese have embraced the car at a staggering pace. This next mind-blowing fact pretty much sums up this entire video: as the country’s middle class boomed and tens of millions of people suddenly could afford to buy cars, in the 20 years from 1985 to 2005, the number of passenger vehicles in China increased from 19,000 to 62 million cars on the road, that’s a mind-blowing increase of 323,000%. And that 62 million number is more than tripling to 200 million by 2020. That’s why we’ve seen those stories that I thought were a joke the first time I read them, of traffic jams around Beijing stretching over 60 miles and lasting for 11 days. So this project is sorely needed simply for the country to function. When it’s finished, it will have cut total travel times between cities throughout the country, by half, on average. Overall the total cost of building the entire system is $240 billion dollars, that’s easily the biggest infrastructure project in human history, with $12 billion a year being invested through 2020. It’s been able to afford to do this without adding a national fuel tax because 95% of the system are toll roads owned by private, for-profit companies. This is a problem, as tolls are expensive at over 10 cents per mile...which is more than the cost of fuel itself. But regardless of how the roads are paid for, or whether, you drive on them in your gas or electric car, or ride in a self-driving car. The Chinese economy and quality of life of its people will be significantly better thanks to this ambitious project. It seems the whole country is embracing the Chinese saying, “Lutong Caiton,” wealth follows the extension of motorways.