This is truly a "longwatch" (one and a half hours), so I just browsed it. I continue to be impressed by the investment China is making in its infrastructure.
"It is a transportation corridor created to promote rural economic development... This section of the route officially opened in the second half of 2024. The most famous section of the route is the “72 Curves of Tongqiangou Valley ”, the highway looks like a giant dragon circling between the lofty mountains. Road started to turn in bends and switchbacks, the altitude climbs rapidly, and the rolling hills in the distance will continue to unfold in front of your eyes.
Related: Driving in Shangri-La (another hour-long video)
I'd be interested to know what the centerline colors represent.
ReplyDeleteIs it safe to assume that the colors used for the center lines and painted road surfaces are some sort of communications with drivers?
ReplyDeleteI wondered the same thing. Google Gemini offered a long answer, which I'll paste part of here:
Delete2. "Rainbow Roads" in Tourist Areas (Permanent)
When these colorful lines span long distances through scenic landscapes, mountains, or rural villages, they are a permanent feature known as "Rainbow Roads".
China intentionally paints these eye-catching centerlines to give tourist routes a distinct visual identity. This aesthetic engineering strategy serves multiple purposes:
• Navigation: It makes special tourist paths, scenic loops, and cultural routes easily distinguishable from standard municipal roads.
• Safety: The vibrant, high-contrast colors act as a visual stimulant, keeping drivers alert and preventing highway hypnosis on long, winding rural drives.
• Tourism Branding: They add a unique cultural and creative element to the landscape, making the infrastructure highly photogenic and popular on social media.
Are you asking about a specific road or video you saw online, or would you like to know more about the specialized multi-pump machines used to spray these lines?
It'll be more interesting to see what that infrastructure looks like in twenty years. They started the big push about thirty years ago and a lot of those projects are falling apart. The quality of the work being done is far worse now than it was back then.
ReplyDeleteTrue. I noted while browsing this route that it is extremely susceptible to rockfalls, with little or not protection. Even without earthquakes, normal thermal and weather changes put much of the road at risk. Also I think the surface looks more like concrete than asphalt, so a large carbon footprint.
DeleteI have two monitors at my work station and rarely use the second one so I'll put on a video like this, or, more often, a Scandinavian "slow TV" train trip, some of which can run for several hours. It's very relaxing and I enjoy glancing over and occasionally being surprised by a passing detail.
ReplyDeleteOne video I had running was a South American train trip. My boss came by to tell me something and suddenly yelled "Llamas on the track!" We were both relieved to see the llamas get out of the way of the train.