Shanghai Roads

In my area of the city, Qibao, I live on Zhongchun road. This road is set up like many other busy roads throughout the city. It runs pretty much North/South and in the middle of the road there is a median that seperates the traffic going in different directions. This prevents cars from making a left hand turn into driveways and some side streets. Instead, they need to make a U turn at the next traffic light, and then the turn they wish to make will be a right hand one.

You can only turn left on a left hand signal light on the roads as well as make a U turn. On some roads the left turning and U turn lanes are on the far right instead of on the far left. This may have something to do with the bike traffic.

Many roads have additional medians that separate the bike lanes from the car lanes. The bike lanes are narrow, just big enough for one car to fit. The majority of the bikes and motor bikes that use these roads head in the same direction as the traffic beside them, but the odd bike will drive the opposite way. If you are lucky they will stay on the right side of the bike lane. Generally if you are going the opposite way you should use the lane on the other side of the street.

The roads are set up very conveniently for navigating yourself through the city, even for a foreigner. At each intersection, or cross street as they are often referred to as, there is a sign that labels each road in both English and Chinese characters as well as which direction is north/south,  or east/west. There are also numbers on the signs indicating which addresses are which way. I have not found the numbers on the signs very helpful however because sometimes the roads are split into a direction and the numbers can repeat themselves.

To get to the different parts of the city and to help ease the traffic they have built elevated highways. These highways are just as they sound, elevated. They are roads above roads. They add to the notion that Shanghai is a tall city, even if that is more due to all the sky scrapers in Pudong. This is especially true when an elevated road intersects an elevated road.

While driving on the roads you are at times as high as the buildings you are driving past. It's interesting being on the bus and looking over and seeing a building below you that is actually several stories high. It isn't really easy to illustrate the elevated highways via pictures from on the ground, at least not in my area. You should be able to see however that the elevated road in the distance is much higher than the ground I am standing on to take the picture.


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Thank you for reading and Merry Christmas. I will be spending my Christmas in Beijing on the Great Wall of China. It will be my first experience of China outside of the very westernized Shanghai. I'll be traveling by high speed train too which will allow me to see a little of the Chinese country side.