I recently went on the coolest car trip ever — a getaway from Shanghai’s nerve-wrecking gridlock.

It was on my way toward the offshore Yangshan Deep-Water Port in neighboring Zhejiang Province. The route goes across the Donghai Bridge, the longest cross-sea bridge in the world at 32.5 kilometers. The sparkling sea and a magnificent offshore wind farm made for beautiful scenery along the way. But above all, I enjoyed the freedom of the open road, free of heavy traffic, where I could press on the gas pedal and whizz past other cars on the throughway.

I was surprised to hear my navigation system telling me the traffic conditions ahead were excellent. I’m more used to it giving me bad news about horrendous backups down the road.

“That’s because you haven’t experienced driving outside of the Shanghai you know,” said my friend Alex. “You should explore beyond the city more.”

He was the one who suggested that we forsake the usual popular visitor destinations during the recent weeklong holiday and head out where few people venture. It turned out to be the ultimate driving luxury for someone living in a crowded city. But to attain this solitude and freedom, you have to outpace urban sprawl.

Alex and I both work and live in Shanghai. Traffic jams that were once limited to downtown areas are spreading out along with the city. Once calm suburban areas are calm no longer.

According to Shanghai’s latest demographic and traffic survey, 70 percent of Shanghai’s new permanent residents in the past five years — numbering 2.16 million people — have settled in less crowded suburban areas. Following that, the car penetration rate there has gone up to 160 per 1,000 people, even higher than the 128 per 1,000 people in Shanghai’s downtown area.

For suburbanites, the car is not only a symbol of success in life but also a necessity for commuting to work. Passenger car traffic volumes created by suburban dwellers increased up to 58 percent from 2009 to 2014. It’s become a struggle to squeeze into downtown areas during the morning rush and then to creep stop-and-go back home after work.

It’s not just a matter of work. The survey finds increasing non-work travel, such as shopping and recreation, generates more than half of the traffic volume in Shanghai. In other words, no time of the day is safe from gridlock.

As a native resident of downturn Shanghai, I share the frustration but I don’t expect anything to change anytime soon.

Areas of highly concentrated resources in business, education, entertainment, healthcare and other urban amenities will never be short of people. No matter how they arrive, they all suffer from a certain degree of crowdedness. At least those of us stuck in our cars can enjoy some degree of comfort, flexibility and privacy.

Public transport in Shanghai deserves some criticism and also some sympathy. It cannot keep pace with the growth of this city as it will always overstrech itself to cover an unbalanced urbanning setting.

And that, as a fundamental cause of congestion in big cities like Shanghai and Beijing, cannot be cured with economic levers or regulatory dictates.

Policymakers who think they can coax people out of their cars are a bit like the little boy putting his finger in a hole in the dike. People want to drive. They like owning cars. They don’t want to be told they can’t.

No wonder Shanghai’s license plate auctions are so contentious. To own a plate that allows a driver to use the elevated ring roads during rush hours costs more than 82,100 yuan (US$12,914), according to the latest auction figures. That’s more than the cost of many cars.

One’s chances of winning the right to a license plate in auctions with an annual quota of 100,000 are put at about 5 percent. The only reason that price hasn’t skyrocketed further is the carefully designed bidding rules implemented to keep public outcry at a minimum.

“A problem that can be solved with money is not a problem after all,” I lamented, after failing 13 consecutive times to get a Shanghai license plate. I haven’t given up trying.

Those who lose patience and register their cars with non-local license plates run big risks.

Last month, a controversial proposal from Shanghai authorities to charge “congestion fees” for cars with non-local plates was put out for comment by the transportation commission.

The suggested fee is 100 yuan per day, starting from the third day a non-local plated car is in the outer ring road area.

I can image the traffic chaos that will ensue when owners of such cars drive in and out of the zone every three days just to evade fees. And I doubt very much that such a system will really reduce traffic congestion.

Shanghai points to the example of London as the basis for congestion pricing. Motor vehicles operating in a zone of central London between 7am and 6pm, Mondays through Fridays, are charged 11.5 British pounds (US$17.8) a day for the privilege. There is no charge on weekends or holidays.

I guess the Shanghai plan might be a good source of revenue. I just hope, if the measure is adopted, that the money will be used to build roads that have express lanes for longer distance drivers. At the same time, the city needs to restructure itself into multi-centers to spread out traffic congestion.

On our out-of-downtown excursion, before crossing the bridge, Alex and I drove past a large piece of undeveloped land, imagining how it will one day become Shanghai’s next satellite town.

It all looked so quiet, like a refuge from the noisy downtown area. But I guess living there would be like jumping from the frying pan into the fire. As the city expands outward, traffic congestion simply follows.

“At least, Shanghai is much better than Beijing where congestion is concerned,” I told myself.

Whenever I feel I cannot take any more congestion, I feel heartened by the “Song of the Fifth Ring,” which pokes fun at Beijing’s jammed ring road system, the poster child of a highly centralized urban system.

Half of Beijing’s population lives in suburban areas, and their need to go downturn for work pushes congestion through the Fifth Ring Road right into the heart of the city.

I love the lyrics:

“The decayed horns blasting. The miserable drivers sighing. The Beijing style is cars waiting in line. Going to work and home. For dreams, houses, and holidays.”

“I know the Fifth Ring is congested. The homecoming is not easy. And I don’t care. I just want to get on the Fifth Ring. The Fifth Ring. The Fifth Ring.”

“One day, there will be a Seventh Ring. What can we do about that? There will be two more rings.”

I hummed the tune as I drove home from our day trip, trying to keep my spirits up as I went back to face the Shanghai I know.