Freeway exits you hate the most

[golden eagle]

I-55 northbound in Memphis at exit 12 (Crump Blvd.)  ! I-55 traffic must merge unto an exit ramp on the far right lane (a cloverleaf ramp at that). The traffic, which is always full of 18-wheelers, can become quite backed up. In fact, I've pretty much pledged not to go that way anymore. From now on, I'm going either I-240 north to I-40 west or stay on 55 where it becomes Riverside Drive when proceeding north and take it to I-40 (where Riverside ends). I wish something new could be done about that exit.

[Bryant5493]

285 North to 20 West on the Westside -- it's a left exit.

I dislike the merge from U.S. 78 West to 285 South -- it's a left hand merge.

I dislike the merge from Ralph D. Abernathy Blvd. (Turner Field) to I-75 South/85 South. The ramp ends pretty much immediately upon reaching I-75 South/85 South.

I dislike the whole set-up for I-85 @ Virginia Ave. Va. Ave. to I-85 South exits pretty much immediately into the Atlanta Airport. Va. Ave. to I-85 North does the same, but into N. Central Ave. Travelers wishing to go north on I-85 from the Atlanta Airport must merge left to continue north, and travelers on I-85 North wishing to exit on Va. Ave. East, must merge right to go east on Va. Ave.

Many of the entrance/exits ramps on the Downtown Connector are a mess, due to right-of-way constraints.


Be well,

Bryant

[74/171FAN]

I-95 at US 250/Broad St(Exit 74C) obviously because of the obvious US 33 errors

I-95 at VA 144/Temple Ave(Exit 54) especially where traffic from I-95 NB has to yield to traffic coming from I-95 SB into one lane before widening to three just before the VA 144 signal.

I-95 at VA 10(Exit 61)- has too much traffic enetering/exiting to still be a regular cloverleaf.  Too bad VDOT is broke to where they won't tear down the old RPT building and make it add C/D Roads.  Also traffic from I-95 NB to VA 10 EB has to stop at a stop sign instead of merging.

[Darkchylde]

I-10 East through Baton Rouge - I-110 is a left exit and takes the mainline. Not only does I-10 traffic have to exit, it damn near has to compress to one lane to proceed.

[Hellfighter]

I-75 at M-59, an interchange that hasn't changed, but the amount of traffic has.

[deathtopumpkins]

I-64 Eastbound/Outer to VA 168 Southbound. A very tight loop ramp immediately after which you must cut across 3 lanes of traffic to stay on VA 168 and not exit onto US-17. Not an easy proposition. Last time I tried it I ended up sitting on the shoulder with a few other cars waiting for someone to be nice and let me in. Forget taking VA 168, I was lucky to just get in with traffic.

[agentsteel53]

when I was living in San Diego, I was always bothered by the fact that I-8 eastbound reduced to one lane to cross I-5.

[Marc]

I-10 eastbound at the I-45 interchange in downtown Houston. The exit to southbound (Galveston) is always messed up. Something has to be done on I-45 throughout downtown and to I-610 in either direction. They should also revamp 45's interchange with 59/288. I-45 only retains two lanes in each direction through that interchange.

[froggie]

I live along the DC Beltway.  'Nuff said.

[Duke87]

All those places in the New York area where, to go from one highway to another (usually a parkway is involved), you have to first exit onto the service road (frontage road) and then, sometimes after having passed through a signal or two, take an exit onto the other highway from there.
There are many examples of this:

-Hutchinson River Parkway and I-287: all movements use Westchester Avenue (287's service roads). The NE, SE, WN, WS, and ES movements must pass through a traffic signal in the process. The SW movement passes through no signal but must shift all the way across two lanes of Westchester Av from right to left in the space of about 500 feet.

-I-87 and Cross County Parkway: all movements use Central Park Avenue. ES and WS movements must pass through a signal. The NE movement passes through no signal but must shift across a lane of Central Av from left to right in the space of about 400 feet.

-Bronx River Parkway and I-95: The SW movement uses E 177th St and must pass through a traffic signal. All other movements use the Cross Bronx service road. The EN and NW movements must use a U-turn at Rosedale Av, and the EN movement has about 500 feet to merge from left to right across two lanes of service road after that. The WN movement must pass through a signal. The SE and NE movements have about 400 feet and 200 feet (respectively) to merge across two lanes of service road from right to left. The ES and WS movements are not even possible (but would be mostly redundant anyway).

- Grand Central Parkway and I-495: all movements use the LIE service road, the SW movement takes you along the service road for some length through two traffic signals.

- I-678 and Belt Parkway: the SW, NW, and WS movements use North Conduit Avenue. WN, SE, and NE are direct (though SE is a left exit). EN and ES involve using the "Nassau Expressway", which here operates as really little more than a glorified CD road (not the I-878 portion of it).

[DBrim]

I-95 to I-95 one-lane cloverleaf south of Boston.

East LA interchange.

[mapman]

Hamilton Avenue exit from southbound CA 17 in Campbell, CA (near San Jose).  This exit frequently backs up onto the mainline freeway during commute hours, despite the fact that it has TWO dedicated exit lanes from the freeway.   

[myosh_tino]

I've got three in Silicon Valley (San Jose and Vicinity)...

* Foothill Expwy exit from north I-280 in Cupertino.  This exit is located less than 1/4 mile from the I-280/CA-85 interchange and in order to make the exit, you have to deal with traffic from 85 merging onto I-280.  Click for MAP

* Stevens Creek Blvd exit from south CA-85 in Cupertino.  This exit is similar to the Foothill/280 exit I mentioned above.  To make this exit from CA-85, you have to deal with traffic merging onto 280 south onto 85 south all within 1/4 of a mile. Click for MAP

* CA-237 exit from CA-85 north in Sunnyvale.  During the morning commute, this exit causes traffic to routinely backup on CA-85 all the way back to the I-280 interchange 4 miles away.  The reason is the close proximity to the El Camino Real/CA-82 cloverleaf interchange on CA-85.  The ramp from north 82 to north 85 is located less than 1/4 mile from the exit to CA-237 which causes tremendous weaving.  Making matters worse, CA-237 is a major corridor handing traffic getting to the companies located in north San Jose. Click for MAP

Local transportation officials are aware that these interchanges need to be addressed but there is no money available to fix them.  There was talk of rebuilding the CA-85/I-280/Foothill Expwy interchange complex and the CA-85/CA-237 interchange but with no funds, these projects may not be built for years.

[Tarkus]

My all-time least favorite has to be Exit 9 on I-84 Westbound in Portland, OR (the I-205 exit).  It's a left-exit that basically takes two fast lanes and dumps them onto I-205 right by the airport.  So you go from doing about 70 to doing 5 in a matter of moments, and of course, this causes the through lanes on I-84 to back up.

From what I know of Portland freeway history, this absolute clusterbleep of an interchange is the result of the Mt. Hood Freeway getting canceled.  I-84 (well, technically, I-80N as it was known then) was to have been routed down the I-205 corridor south to Powell Blvd., and it would have been a right exit off onto the present-day I-84, which I assume was originally intended as a 3di/spur of some sort.

I-405 at US-26 is always a colossal mess as well.  Horribly outdated ramps that don't have nearly enough lanes, and it probably isn't going to get rebuilt anytime soon (if ever) because of the proximity to downtown Portland.

-Alex (Tarkus)

[agentsteel53]

I dislike the 101/85/237 triangle because I used to live there and was always bewildered by the quantity of surface streets I needed to take to make the acute angles, as those did not have direct freeway-to-freeway connections.  It was assumed that through traffic would take the obtuse angles as needed to continue, but for me, who needed to take very specific local exits that would've been most quickly accessed via a quick hook turn, this turned into a navigational disaster every time.

add to that that I never quite fully grasped that "101 north" ran almost due west through there... ah well, at least there's a nice old sign just a few miles on the 101 north (west, whatever!) of that triangle.

[Terry Shea]

Almost every exit off from US-131 in Grand Rapids is challenging to say the least.  Many have very short ramps with a traffic light at the top and traffic gets backed up quickly.  Others have sharp turns, left hand exits or both.  The interchanges with I-196 and I-96 are particularly bad.

At the I-196 interchange the NB and SB lanes weave over and under each other (and under and over I-196 along with a surface street) so that the SB lanes are actually to the right of the NB lanes right at the exits.  NB US-131 to WB I-196 requires a left hand exit and a left hand entry, as does SB US-131 to EB I-196.  There are also left hand exits and entries from I-196 to US-131.  I call this interchange "the corkscrew" or "the maze".

US-131 NB to I-96 is also quite nightmarish.  Traffic to EB and WB I-96 both must exit to the left, then about 1/2 mile down the ramp, the EB traffic exits once again off to the right, so EB traffic must first take a sharp left and then a very tight right.  Traffic continuing WB on the ramp then has the Alpine Ave NB exit ramp to contend with which is almost always backed up it seems, creating more problems.  Further complicating matters is the Alpine Ave SB exit about 200 feet or so after the ramp merges with I-96 WB traffic.  The exit is on the right and the US-131 traffic merges with I-96 traffic on the left.  Pile-ups in the area are quite frequent.

There are a couple of good diagrams of these interchanges on The Interstate Guide (although the Alpine exits are left out).

http://www.interstate-guide.com/i-296_mi.html

The bottom left hand pic is the best view I can find of the US-131/I-196 interchange.
http://www.photography-plus.com/image_pages/GrandRapids.htm

[mightyace]

1) In another thread, I mentioned Louisville's "Spaghetti Junction" of I-64/65/71.
2) The "triple trumpet" at the end of PA's Northeast Extension. I-81/476/US 6/US 11
3) I-40 Westbound to I-24 EB/I-440 WB on the east side of Nashville.
4) The ramp from I-76 EB to OH 8 NB in Akron.  They reworked the interchange and that left exit ramp still sucks! 
5) Trying to stay on I-71 in Downtown Columbus with the brief duplex with I-70.  In both directions you need to go from the right side to the left side of the highway!
6) Where I-26 "West" splits off I-240 in Asheville, NC to go compass north.
7) Having to use US 11 to go between the PA turnpike and I-81.
8) I-81 and the Front/Second street interchange in Harrisburg - needlessly complex!

The following were bad until reconfigured:
1) The I-71/76 tight "double trumpet" west of Akron.
2) The I-80/680/OH 11 junction west of Youngstown, prior to reconfiguration, I-80 was just one lane through the intersection in both directions.
3) I-71 from the I-75 split along the Cincinnati riverfront.  It's not ideal now, but it's MUCH better.

[agentsteel53]

Pennsylvania has some lousy intersections. 

I-80 and I-81; the two most significant truck routes in the area (and maybe the whole country) meet completely out in the middle of nowhere, with all kinds of room to build a giant interchange with some nifty high-speed ramp solutions.  And what do they have?  15mph-advisory cloverleaves!   

oh and how can we fail to mention that extremely well-designed intersection between the Penna turnpike and I-95! 

[hm insulators]

The I-10 through the San Gabriel Valley east of Los Angeles has what I call "squashed cloverleaves." You know what a regular cloverleaf looks like, with the round looping ramps. On these, the looping ramps look more like stretched-out rubber bands. And the other ramps, instead of making a relatively gentle C-curve, instead make a sharp 90 elbow. So let's say you're heading east on the I-10 and you want to go south on Atlantic Blvd. You get off the freeway on a very short offramp and immediately have to slow down to about 15 mph to negotiate a sharp 90-degree right turn to get to southbound Atlantic Blvd. Then there's another sharp turn to the left that puts you onto your street.

Getting on the freeway from Atlantic Blvd. is fun. If you're going south on Atlantic and want to pick up the freeway westbound, you have to negotiate these sharp turns onto the acceleration lane, then FLOOR the gas pedal (because there's almost no room to accelerate before you're forced onto the freeway) and hope that other drivers will let you on the freeway.

I imagine when this freeway was built in the early 1950s (as US 60/70/99), these interchanges were probably considered "state of the art." But now, they are just a total disaster, especially in this day and age of rude, discourteous drivers. And Los Angeles is full of those!

Perhaps someone in Los Angeles with a little more computer savvy than myself could post maps or aerial pictures of one of these interchanges.

[mightyace]

I-80 and I-81; the two most significant truck routes in the area (and maybe the whole country) meet completely out in the middle of nowhere, with all kinds of room to build a giant interchange with some nifty high-speed ramp solutions.  And what do they have?  15mph-advisory cloverleaves! 

Having been through that interchange hundreds of times in my life, I have to agree.  While the terrain is not wide open (I-81 on the north side is on a long mountain upgrade), there is still more than enough room to do something better.

The left exit ramp from I-80 East to I-81 North is probably the best of the "inner" movements that are normally loop ramps.  While a left exit is not ideal, it is certainly better than those loop ramps.  I'm sure that if they wanted to, this ramp could be replaced with a flyover and similar ramps could replace the existing loops.

I think that this didn't make my list because 99% of the I-80/I-81 movements I've done in my life are I-80E to I-81N and I-81S to I-80W which are not much of a problem.

Edit:
<rant>
Probably the only way something will get done about this interchange is if Gov. Rendell and the other looters in H'burg get the I-80 tolling thing done! 
</rant>

[agentsteel53]

the last time I was there, I turned from 80 WB to 81 SB and damn near fell off the road.  80 WB to 81 NB looks to be even worse.

[myosh_tino]

ah well, at least there's a nice old sign just a few miles on the 101 north (west, whatever!) of that triangle.

If you are referring to the overhead signs that still had a green U.S. 101 shield outlined in white, there used to be two, one northbound at San Antonio Road and one southbound at Rengstorff Ave.  The southbound sign still exists but the northbound sign was replaced in 2008.

[TheStranger]

The ramp from US 50 westbound to Business 80 east in midtown Sacramento is painful, with a merge less than 200 feet long.  Yikes!

[agentsteel53]

the northbound sign was gone by 2006, I am quite sure.  there was one on southbound 880 at 101 that vanished sometime between 2004 and 2006, and one on the Dumbarton bridge westbound that was around in October '06 but gone by the time I next tried to find it, sometime in 2008.

[Hellfighter]

The M-14 exit ramp to Barton Drive in Ann Arbor. Pure Evil!