This is my second installment of the Ulaanbatar Traffic Camera. Well, it's what I am calling it anyway; You see, I decided during my four hour, less than 5mile journey yesterday, that I would take some photos of what I was seeing out the window - as a way to pass the time but also as a way to capture a bit of what Mongolia looks like on any normal rainy Tuesday afternoon.
I want to say that I have officially never been in such a bad traffic jam for such an extended period of time. Our driver turned the engine off twice for an extended period of time - and that's always a bad sign. In fact, the traffic was so bad, that myself and Darya got out of the car and walked the remaining mile to our destination. Not only did we beat our driver, but we were able to conplete our task at the location before the car even showed up. I know that reading about traffic is almost as bad as having a conversation about the weather with a complete stranger, but I feel compelled to discuss how incredibly bad the traffic is in UB because it doesn't make sense that there is this amount of it.
Here's a statistic that astonished me yesterday; more than 300 hundred new cars are put on the road in Ulaanbatar every day. So, what is happening in UB is that the country is finding itself in a strange position as it is progressing at a rate faster than their infrastructure can handle. The roads are so bad, filled with pot holes, overflowing with puddles with the slightest of precipitation. The pedestrians don't respect the power of the vehicle which creates a bottleneck of cars at every intersection as they try and weave around the pedestrians that have jumped in front of them. It's horrible and unfortunately, unless they invest a lot of money in fixing the infrastructure, these problems and others will continue to happen in the city.
MR
I want to say that I have officially never been in such a bad traffic jam for such an extended period of time. Our driver turned the engine off twice for an extended period of time - and that's always a bad sign. In fact, the traffic was so bad, that myself and Darya got out of the car and walked the remaining mile to our destination. Not only did we beat our driver, but we were able to conplete our task at the location before the car even showed up. I know that reading about traffic is almost as bad as having a conversation about the weather with a complete stranger, but I feel compelled to discuss how incredibly bad the traffic is in UB because it doesn't make sense that there is this amount of it.
Here's a statistic that astonished me yesterday; more than 300 hundred new cars are put on the road in Ulaanbatar every day. So, what is happening in UB is that the country is finding itself in a strange position as it is progressing at a rate faster than their infrastructure can handle. The roads are so bad, filled with pot holes, overflowing with puddles with the slightest of precipitation. The pedestrians don't respect the power of the vehicle which creates a bottleneck of cars at every intersection as they try and weave around the pedestrians that have jumped in front of them. It's horrible and unfortunately, unless they invest a lot of money in fixing the infrastructure, these problems and others will continue to happen in the city.
MR