Road closures/accidents/etc. that cause very long backups

[hotdogPi]

Although this isn't an accident or road closure, this is simply weather.

I find it funny that rain can singlehandedly cause the whole city to get jammed.

On the other hand, rain can cause traffic that would normally be stopped to flow at about 30 mph due to reduced demand.

[skluth]

I don't have a screenshot. But accidents happen frequently on I-10 in the mountain passes east and west of the Coachella Valley. I-10 is only two lanes each way east of the valley and accidents around Chiriaco Summit are often late night-single driver accidents caused by someone falling asleep at the wheel. These will shut down the highway for several hours, but are usually cleared out by about 7 AM. Accidents between Banning and CA 111 can be a disaster with four lanes of traffic each way and no alternatives. It can be bad enough without accidents (especially with the current construction project), with traffic from events like Coachella and Stagecoach causing hours-long backups. Wind in San Gorgonio Pass can be especially bad with the big rigs, and car/truck accidents are a common occurrence during high wind events. (Car/truck accidents are frequent enough here that we get commercials for accident-chasing lawyers who specialize in those cases.) So far, I've been lucky enough not to get caught going home to PS but I did once turn around when heading to the IE because an accident had closed I-10 at Cabazon.

Similar problems probably occur at most interstate Western passes. Traffic is bad enough exiting the LA Basin on I-5 up the Grapevine or on I-15 through Cajon Pass to Vegas on Fridays. Accidents will completely trash these traffic bottlenecks for hours, though both are wide enough that it's rare that all the lanes are blocked.

[Bruce]

Spill something on a roadway in the Seattle area and you can generate a fun traffic jam:

March 24, 2015 - A salmon truck overturned on the approach to the Alaskan Way Viaduct, blocking the southbound lanes at 2:30 pm. Gridlock ensues on parallel corridors and the truck isn't removed until 9:30. A Sounders game was delayed by 30 minutes as fans (and goalkeeper Stefan Frei) had to find ways of reaching the stadium.

April 4, 2016 - A crab truck overturns on the viaduct and blocks the northbound lanes for 3 hours.

February 27, 2017 - A propane truck overturns on I-5 and closes the southbound lanes for 8 hours.

And more: https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2018/05/23/26479809/the-weird-shit-that-has-spilled-on-seattle-highways

[fillup420]

when the Cape Fear bridge in downtown Wilmington NC opens, traffic all around the area becomes chaotic. I have only been caught by it once, but I have seen the traffic nightmare that is created. The bridge has a twitter that announces openings. Looking back, it seems like most openings happen on non-peak times, but on june 18 it opened at 5:30 PM

[HighwayStar]

Another condition I will attribute to major backups is the lack of an alternative route. The obvious cases involve bridges, tunnels, etc. but even just where there is no parallel route that can take some of the traffic. That rarely helps those already stuck but it can provide relief for those further out. A major benefit of retaining US routes that parallel freeways.

[zzcarp]

It's not causing big backups yet because it's Saturday night, and I-70 is once again closed in Glenwood Canyon. CDOT calls for a 3 hour detour. The big backups come from extended closures when trucks and other long vehicles try to shortcut over Independence Pass or the dirt Cottonwood Pass near Eagle and get stuck, blocking the only closer alternative routes.

Current traffic conditions:

[andrepoiy]

Not necessarily a long backup, but this happening right now at 9:40 PM due to... you guessed it, ice!!!!!!!

[plain]

The worst I've seen in the Richmond area was about 10 years ago, when a truck leaked chemicals onto I-95 NB just before Exit 92 (VA 54 Ashland), shutting down the interstate. This occurred at about 4pm on a Friday, so not only right in time for rush hour but also weekend travel. The closure and cleanup caused the highway to back up all the way past Exit 69, a distance of 23 miles. I-295 was also backed up considerably, and both US 1 and US 301 through Hanover County was jammed with traffic trying to get around the spill in both directions.

[bwana39]

In Minnesota they'd do their best to get traffic through.  In Austin they close the freeway down for hours to investigate.  Idiot runs across freeway, gets hit. 

It is that way all over Texas EXCEPT for Houston.  In most of Texas a non-injury accident with disabled vehicles will take two hours to clear. In Houston, generally about half an hour or less.

As an aside, the worst traffic tieups in all time in Texas was when they widened the Lake Ray Hubbard Bridges on I-30 back in the 80's.

Currently the lane closures for resurfacing (which are just about always ongoing) along I-20 close one lane and result in delays of  hours especially when the work is on the EB lanes.

[gonealookin]

US 50 has been the only trans-Sierra highway open today in the Reno/Tahoe region.  Westbound traffic has been backed up from the bottom of the Echo Summit portion at Meyers, all the way through the City of South Lake Tahoe and several miles back into Nevada, well over 15 miles.  I walked from my house to a local store along a part of 50 in Nevada and my 3 mph pace was beating the cars easily.

[Max Rockatansky]

US 50 has been the only trans-Sierra highway open today in the Reno/Tahoe region.  Westbound traffic has been backed up from the bottom of the Echo Summit portion at Meyers, all the way through the City of South Lake Tahoe and several miles back into Nevada, well over 15 miles.  I walked from my house to a local store along a part of 50 in Nevada and my 3 mph pace was beating the cars easily.

I suspect a lot of that traffic would have been diverting to CA 58 if US 395 hadn't been closed between CA 182-CA 203.  One year I had to bail out of the Tahoe region via US 95 and US 6 to reach US 395 in Bishop post snow storm.  It was long but way better than sitting in traffic like you describe or dealing with potential R3 control zones.

[WillWeaverRVA]

Any minor incident on the I-95/I-64 overlap in Richmond, VA, usually north/westbound, causes backups for several miles, with I-64 sometimes backing up as far as the VA 33/Nine Mile Road exit and I-95 backing up as far as the VA 161/Bells Road exit.

[andrepoiy]

Winter storm




EDIT: Google Maps is now telling you "don't go anywhere"

[7/8]

Today's a good day to resurrect this thread. Lots of traffic in several states and Ontario:


Substantial road closures in Southwestern Ontario and Western New York:

[webny99]

Indeed. We've had light snow here but mostly just blowing and drifting.

It is worth noting that the orange traffic level isn't necessarily "traffic" in the traditional sense... it may also mean that traffic is light, but moving below the speed limit because of snowy and in this case also windy conditions. Red and dark red are usually actual slow traffic.

[Bruce]

A few weeks ago, there was a scheduled construction closure of I-90 on the Lake Washington floating bridge, which caused a multi-hour backup during a Friday rush hour.

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/traffic-chaos-forces-complete-closure-of-i-90-westbound-from-mercer-island/

[Alex4897]

I took this after the penny semi crash on I-95 shut down the interstate northbound through Delaware maybe five or six years ago. We've had a bee semi crash, a pumpkin semi crash, and a police pursuit / shootout all close the interstate and screw the rest of the county up like this over the past few years.



Certainly not the longest, but the ripple effect was astonishing to watch unfold as that morning wore on.

[JoePCool14]

What's going on here in Minnesota? Have they still not recovered? I checked the radar and I don't see any new snow coming down.

[Big John]

^^ High winds causing drifting, possible white out conditions.

[andrepoiy]

Closure of Highway 401 due to a fatal collision.

Since the freeway was closed in the early morning, it appears that the majority of people got the message before they left, so the backup on the freeway itself isn't particularly long.

All of the parallel routes are absolutely jammed.

Image shows morning rush hour

[fillup420]

Indeed. We've had light snow here but mostly just blowing and drifting.

It is worth noting that the orange traffic level isn't necessarily "traffic" in the traditional sense... it may also mean that traffic is light, but moving below the speed limit because of snowy and in this case also windy conditions. Red and dark red are usually actual slow traffic.

on the topic of digital map traffic conditions... The yellow/orange color can be caused by construction crews being on roadway with phones in pockets. So the traffic may be flowing at speed, but since all those phones are slow-moving or stationary, the map service sees slow traffic.

[andrepoiy]

Here's the situation during afternoon rush

This is probably the very first time I've seen any red on the traffic map on Highway 407 due to traffic volume.

[jeffandnicole]

Partially due to the I-95 closure, I slogged through one of my longest non-weather related jams last week on I-295 SB in NJ: About 20 miles.  Started before Exit 45; ended after Exit 26.  During rush hour, a normal jam would be about 10-14 miles (which is probably longer than most have sat in a jam...and that's again, a normal rush hour jam!) starting between Exit 40 (NJ 38) and Exit 36 (NJ 73) down to Exit 26 (I-76/NJ 42), so the additional traffic added considerably to that.  For the most part, it was Jersey cars in that jam, not PA cars coming across the river. 

I've concluded that NJ residents that would normally cross the Ben Franklin or Walt Whitman Bridges are taking I-295 North instead, and using a bridge above the closure point of I-95. No one interchange has been overly congested, so motorists have taken numerous different roads and bridges to get to their destinations.

[kylebnjmnross]

I-83 in Harrisburg is a joke, especially at the 19th St bottleneck and the Eisenhower interchange. There is an accident like every single day, and every single time it messes up like half of the entire beltway.

https://www.google.com/maps/@40.2565798,-76.8567541,188m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu

https://www.google.com/maps/@40.2530718,-76.8133733,556m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu

Also I-83 at the PA 581 interchange, specifically southbound because the project they did in 2012 that was supposed to fix the problem only moved the problem down the street to here:

https://www.google.com/maps/@40.2328173,-76.891745,141m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu

which created a very short merge for 581 to 83 southbound traffic, resulting in many accidents. And on the northbound side, if you want to get to 581 from Carlisle Rd, you have to shoot across 2 lanes and get in the far left lane (which is pretty dangerous because it leads to a 20 MPH advisory loop ramp) and of course leads to even more accidents. I-83 in this area is like someone thought of every possible way to build a highway wrong, and then built it.