5th Ring Road

Beijing's 5th Ring Road (simplified Chinese: 五环路; traditional Chinese: 五環路; pinyin: Wǔ Huán Lù, China Road Numbering: S50 (Beijing) is a ring road encircling the city about 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) away from the city centre. It takes the form of an expressway and is 98 kilometres (61 mi) in length. Being a ring road, it has no natural start or end point, although the "0 km" mark is found near the northeastern stretch at Laiguangying, at the intersection with the Jingcheng Expressway. The expressway ring road is a provincial-level road in Beijing municipality.

All of Beijing's expressways, except for the Tongyan Expressway, are interlinked with the 5th Ring Road.

Portions of the expressway have a maximum speed limit of 90 km/h, with the remainder imposing a speed limit of 100 km/h. There is a universal minimum speed limit of 50 km/h.

The 4th ring road has three lanes in each direction, for a total of six lanes.

The route was originally called the "1st Expressway Ring Road", as it would take the form of an expressway, and therefore become the city's first expressway ring road. However, given the fact that the 2nd Ring Road, 3rd Ring Road and 4th Ring Road were in existence, re-ordering it as a ring road with a number value of 1, especially as it was outside the 4th Ring Road, looked odd. Therefore, it was renamed the 5th Ring Road, after some debate.

Work began soon after and the first portion of the ring road opened in 2001, linking the Badaling Expressway with the Airport Expressway. Further stretches of the road were soon opened. By mid-2003, half of the ring road was open, from the western end connecting the West Chang'an Avenue to the interchange in the southeast with the Jingjintang Expressway.

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