Thousands of trucks stuck in China traffic jam

Thousands of coal trucks were backed up for miles on a northern China highway Friday, the latest in a series of monster jams that have plagued the overloaded road since construction began on a parallel route earlier this summer.

Trucks loaded high with coal from Inner Mongolia inched along bumper-to-bumper on the Beijing-Tibet highway as police redirected traffic and reminded drivers to stay alert, an official with Jining traffic police in Inner Monglia said Friday. Like many Chinese bureaucrats, he refused to give his name.

State television broadcaster CCTV reported that about 10,000 trucks were stuck in the jam for at least 75 miles (120 kilometers) on Thursday, turning a stretch of road connecting the coal-rich city of Ordos to Jining in Inner Mongolia into a virtual parking lot.

The traffic jams are part of continuing congestion along the Beijing-Tibet highway that began escalating in mid-August - fueled by road construction on the nearby Beijing-Xinjiang highway and the opening up of coal mines in the northwest.

Last month, some trucks were stuck for up to five days on the Beijing-Tibet road with drivers on the worst-hit stretches passing the time sitting in the shade of their immobilized vehicles, playing cards, and sleeping on the asphalt.

China is one of the world's fastest-growing economies, surpassing Japan in size last month, and it relies on coal to meet two-thirds of its energy needs.