With the I-15 closure due to file on May 5th (https://www.aaroads.com/forum/index.php?topic=12285.0) and the January 28th Snowmageddon (https://www.aaroads.com/forum/index.php?topic=11481.0) occurring this year, the question is.... what is the worst traffic jam that you have been in? We're not talking about normal traffic jams, but extraordinary ones and why.
Mine was in August, 2012. I was travelling to Truckee, CA after work from Sacramento for a Toastmasters training session where I was to assist with some training. Along the way, my GPS went nuts as it received notifcation of a accident and backup. I figured that it would clear after an hour. WRONG! The traffic was backing up before CA-20/I-80, and a section which normally takes 10 minutes to travel took over two hours. What made it worse was that there was no alternative routes plus part of the highway was closed for reconstruction, thus three lanes were reduced to two.
I-278 in Staten Island, NY: A car took out a guardrail not too far from the split with NY 440 - it took about 40 minutes to get 3-6 miles. It was horrible. We were supposed to be going to Brooklyn for a party, but we ended up being late because of the accident. The entire westbound lanes of the highway were ground to a halt. Ugh. Thank goodness for iPhones.
I've always said, I wonder what it would be like if my entire 41 mile commute was congested. I found out this past year during a snowfall. 4 1/2 hours it took to go home. Normally only about 10 miles of that 41 miles is congested, and even factoring that in the trip takes about an hour.
March 2013, I-55 (IL) just north of the Lexington Exit (Exit 178). Two semis had gotten into it and rolled over the entire southbound lanes on icy pavement. I was stuck a mere mile north of it for about two hours, sitting still with nowhere to go (last exit was back at Chenoa, Exit 187).
Why the icy pavement? IDOT District 5 (Paris) maintains the area in McLean County while IDOT District 3 (Ottawa) maintains the area just to the north in Livingston County. District 3 plowed all of the ice and snow off I-55 while District 5 failed to do so. As soon as I made the turn west into Woodford County on I-74, the road was completely clear again. IDOT District 4 (Peoria) maintains that area and does know how to plow a road. It's not the only time I've ever encountered District 5's shitty snow plowing practices. I encountered them this past January on a site visit to a place in Mattoon. I-57 was full of icy patches and spinouts.
~30 miles to Seattle from Tacoma in October of last year. Big pileup near Boeing field (http://www.king5.com/news/cities/seattle/Multi-car-collision-Seattle-229245021.html) closed I-5 in both directions right in middle of the morning commute. Not sure how many of you are aware of traffic statistics, but Seattle already has the fifth worst traffic in North America (http://www.tomtom.com/lib/doc/trafficindex/2013-1101%20TomTomTrafficIndex2013Q2AME-mi.pdf), so it shouldn't surprise anyone that a 50 minute drive turned into a 3 hour drive. Couple of other accidents caused by the increase in traffic didn't help the side roads. By the way, Everett to Seattle, morning commute regularly reaches two hours. It's a 30 mile drive.
Last summer. I was taking my boyfriend home. :) I think they may have closed down a lane in each direction somewhere. Pretty much the entire stretch of the 403/QEW concurrency (from Hamilton to Mississauga) was backed up for about 2½~3 hours. It usually takes under an hour in regular Sunday night traffic.
Similarly heavy traffic was on the DVP a week later, when we were taking him to Union Station so he could take the bus home. But I don't think that counts, because even on a Sunday the DVP is jammed, and if you've lived in (/near) Toronto long enough you get used to it and start finding alternate routes.
I actually haven't been in severe traffic in a while due to listening traffic radio and whatnot.
The worst jam in which I've been in a couple of years was what I believe to be a regular D.C. weekday rush hour, at the southern terminus of 295, then 495 across the Woodrow Wilson Bridge and 95 south. Skipped much of it on the HOV lanes, but even they jammed eventually as we got closer to the mainline. What frustrated me the most is the amount of single-passenger cars in the HOV lanes (it was around 4 PM, so they were in effect). We got in a similar jam on the way back north, but we bailed out off 495 onto U.S. 50/unsigned I-595 and bypassed 95 on U.S. 301 across the Chesapeake.
Another frustrating one was in 2011 on I-87 south in NYC with a disabled truck on the ramp to I-95 south (GWB). That one took forever.
Sometime back in January 2001, I forget the exact date. I had driven up to Carteret, New Jersey, to take depositions (Exit 12 off the Turnpike). Snow hit on the way home and the southern end of the Turnpike was closed, so I took Exit 6 and headed into Pennsylvania. But for some reason I cannot now explain other than simple utter dumb-assedness on my part, I didn't head west to the Reading/Lancaster area to drop down to York or to Harrisburg to take US-15 or I-81. Instead, I connected onto I-95 and headed through Philadelphia. Super-stupid. The elevated highway was partially frozen over (I somehow managed to avoid skidding and was not hit by anyone else). I saw a car behind me spin across four lanes of traffic when the idiot driver slammed on his brakes when he realized the road was frozen. Other drivers managed to avoid him, but he hit the wall pretty hard. At some point near either I-76 or the sports complex the road came to pretty much a standstill and it took me at least three hours to go roughly 11 miles to the I-476 interchange. At that point, I seem to recall traffic loosened up a bit.
I recall the ice and freezing rain were so bad I wound up stopping my car in the right lane on I-495 in Delaware under an overpass (traffic was moving freely there, so this wasn't exactly a safe thing to do, but the shoulder was covered in schmeck) so I could use an ice scraper to clear off my windshield wipers. From there I was doing about 40 mph all the way home to Virginia. I-95 was pretty much packed snow for most of the way EXCEPT around the toll plazas, where Maryland and Delaware ensured the roads were immaculate. I also remember pulling off at the Delaware service area and a reporter asking if I wanted to be interviewed. I told her I'd be happy to do so AFTER I hit the men's room (my bladder was about to explode after being stuck in traffic for such a long time), but when I came back out she'd moved on.
Why I didn't just stop for the night at that Radisson you can see from I-95 in Delaware is still unclear to me all these years later.
Last year I went through a 5 mile jam that formed due to an accident on (Spanish) N-330 just South of Sabinanigo (So the jam went all the way around). What normally takes no more than 10 minutes took us 1½ hours. To make things worse, that same day was the end of a well known music festival, so everyone was returning home. The best part, that accident prevented the same jam to form at the top of the mountain pass further South (Where it normally forms after long weekends).
Luckily I wasn't driving, and I haven't endured a traffic jam as a driver. Yet.
I have had many multi-hour traffic-jam commutes due to the bad weather in Northern Ohio, so I won't count those.
I-77 south near the tunnels which straddle the WV/VA Border -- Due to an accident & fire in one of the tunnels, I was stuck in a multi-mile backup for nearly 2 hours while they finally decided that they could 2-way the unaffected tube. Seemed like everyone was out on the SB lanes in folding chairs playing games during the ordeal.
I think the worst, maybe not the worst, but the most annoying (wasn't expecting it, it was really bad), was when I drove from Idaho to northern New Hampshire with friends in May 2007 and got stuck in rushhour on the 401 through Toronto- we hit it right at about 4:30 PM. Lesson learned from that was stay in the local lanes- the express lanes were just a standstill.
I've been in some doozies on I-5 around Seattle and I-10 in Phoenix too, but that one in Toronto was the worst, especially I don't believe there were any accidents.
Worst one while traveling:
Got stuck behind a wreck in Baton Rouge on I-12 EB between the Oneal Ln overpass and the on-ramp from that to EB 12. Stuck there for a couple hours with zero movement at all. Then when they figured out how to get us able to make a U-turn down the on-ramp, it took a half-hour to reach nearby LA 426.
Worst one while commuting:
I have had a 62 mile commute in the Washington DC area since 1998, so I probably have 100 commutes that were at least 3 hrs or involved stretches of an hour or more to go a mile or two.
The worst was Feb 2001 where 1/2" snow fell and there was a 100+ car wreck on I-95 in Stafford County - the wreck field was so large that there were pockets of cars within the field that managed to stop without hitting anything. The first half of my commute took about an hour and the last half using US 1 took 5.5 hours.
The ice storm a few years ago that stranded the Virginia governor on the Springfield Interchange flyover wasn't (relatively) all that bad for me...just 3 hours. I had a co-worker who took 9 hrs to get home (11 miles) in Rockville MD.
Mapmikey
Quote from: corco on May 08, 2014, 02:28:09 PM
Lesson learned from that was stay in the local lanes- the express lanes were just a standstill.
Sometimes the jam is actually on both sides; you can't really tell for sure.
We were in a traffic jam one night (it was around 7:30~8:30 I think) where we were in the collector lanes and decided to transfer into the express. A few minutes in, express was similarly slow, if not slower, so we decided to just transfer back to the collectors, get off at the next exit and use city streets to get home.
Somehow even 12 lanes or so can't handle Toronto traffic. :ded:
You could also use Highway 7, at least for the part within the GTA. It's a bit longer, but I haven't had a traffic delay there since the December ice storm.
It was probably about 5 years ago, travelling from Bend to Burlington, WA, going over US-97 and I-90 instead of going through Portland. What we didn't realize, is that WSDOT was doing major construction along I-90 between Ellensburg and Snoqualme Pass, dropping it down to I believe one lane per direction for quite a big distance. It was the weekend so there was quite a bit of traffic, and traffic was backed up for probably at least a mile or two back from the merge point, hardly moving. It probably added an hour or so to the trip, completely unexpected.
I am unsure of my actual worst traffic jam (probably the GWB during rush hour on trips to upstate New York), but my least favorite one was back in January. I was coming home from an interview near Baltimore and was glad that I was going to beat the afternoon rush hour in NoVA. However, there was a pothole that closed the right lane at the exit ramp from I-95 to US 17 Business (Exit 133A) (I think the exit was closed as well), which had already backed up to SR 630 (Exit 140) when I hit it (I think I was there about 1:30-2:00). That dropped morale for me intensely the rest of the ride home.
Easy for me to remember. February 24, 1999. Traveling south from Delaware to Mobile, Alabama. Hit the Greenville, SC area on I-85 around 530 or 545 in the morning. Got west of US 276 and came to a complete stop due to a tractor trailer jack knifing. Had my video camera with me, so I decided to shoot a blip of footage showing traffic not moving at all (which was a first for me on an Interstate highway at the time):
(//www.aaroads.com/forum_images/southeast/i0085sc_1998_02_24_01.jpg)
A couple of hours later, they routed us northward on the southbound carriageway back to U.S. 276. I took local roads back to I-85, rejoining it ahead of US 25:
(//www.aaroads.com/forum_images/southeast/i0085sc_1998_02_24_02.jpg)
The culprit for over 250 accidents that morning in the Greenville area was a dusting of snow.
Worst traffic jam I've ever been in was on the Maine Turnpike northbound about three years ago. The reason I got stuck in that traffic was largely due to very poor information being provided by the Maine Turnpike Authority, and the fact I didn't turn on my CB sooner.
As I came out of the Kittery rest area, I noticed that the beacons on the "TRAFFIC ALERT TUNE TO 1620 AM" sign were activated. Tuned in the HAR station to hear a very matter-of-fact sounding message about a vehicle fire in the right shoulder at Exit 17. This message also indicated that Maine State Police and Turnpike maintenance people were on scene. The "OK, this shouldn't be a big deal" feeling I got from the HAR message was reinforced by the fact that the overhead CMS panel approaching the York toll plaza was dark.
So, I elected to stay on the Turnpike. About a mile north of the York plaza, all three lanes ground to a halt. We stayed that way for just over three hours. Once I realized we would be sitting for awhile, only then did I flip on the CB. The "vehicle fire" that sounded so routine was actually a box tractor trailer carrying wooden pallets that had an engine fire and become fully engulfed.
After the authorities finally got the two left lanes open, and traffic started to move again, it still took us over an hour from the end of the backup to the fire scene. By that time, what was left of the tractor trailer (and its cargo) could have easily fit in a pair of 35 gallon pails from Home Depot.
As any hope of getting my business done was shot by then (I had called one appointment to cancel in the meanwhile), I pulled off at the Kennebuckport exit, got gas and a soda, and also took a bathroom break (at least I didn't have to urinate in the trees on the side of the Maine Turnpike), and headed back to Massachusetts.
June 29, 1999. After having worked a twelve-hour shift (which morphed into fifteen hours) overnight in Dallas, I was driving to Austin. Sister was going out of town, needed help with the kids, no problem...until a propane truck crashed and exploded on I-35 in Bruceville-Eddy (between Waco and Temple on I-35). VMS's on I-35 warned of the delay, so I already planned to detour onto US 77 at Waco. Trouble was, the traffic jam had backed up well north of Waco itself. I tried Bus 77 and TX 6 with the intent to get to US 77 but traffic just wasn't moving. I bailed on to side streets with everyone else, eventually made it to US 84, then TX 317 to get back on I-35 at Temple. The three-hour trip took eleven hours. I had no cell service until about Georgetown, so until I could make that call, all anyone knew was that I hadn't shown up at the day care.
One cool thing was all the churches and Boy Scout groups and others that were handing out free water and food, helping push disabled cars out of the traffic, opening up buildings to let people wait for the traffic to clear and such. It was a very hot day, even for June in Texas, so lots of cars were overheating.
...and apropos of another recent topic, at least twice I got out of my car while "parked" in traffic, went into a building, eased my bladder and returned to my car without having needed to have moved because of the gridlock.
There is another story that I wasn't in but it was pretty legendary. My former music teacher, who still teaches at my primary school in Puyallup, which is about a 30 miles south of Seattle, had to drive home to Olympia. There had been a collision earlier in the day, and it was already looking pretty horrendous as far as collisions go: a pickup crossed the media, exploded and a semi truck plus a couple of other cars were all on fire, semi truck driver dead. But she wasn't working the next few days so she just decided to go home. Turns out, traffic was so bad, it took her
NINE HOURS to get home. Normally, in rush hour traffic, it takes about an hour and a bit. Not sure why she didn't take the back roads. That's the longest I've ever known for someone to sit in traffic. We don't really get the legendary snowstorms like the eastern half of the country, so our freeways rarely shut down for more than few hours at a time.
The site of the collision still has the burn marks on the road. It was pretty bad.
Deadly crash shuts down I-5 near JBLM for 11 hours (http://www.king5.com/news/local/collision-southbound-I-5-near-JBLM-236056041.html)
Quote from: King 5 News
A collision on Interstate 5 south of Joint Base Lewis-McChord killed one person and shut down all southbound lanes for 11 hours Monday....The crash happened around 10:15 a.m. By 2 p.m., all lanes were still blocked, but traffic was getting by slowly on the shoulder and a detour was set up at Mounts Road. Traffic was also moving slowly in the northbound lanes.
Any time I-4 has a serious accident is the worst jam for me.
Quote from: corco on May 08, 2014, 02:28:09 PMI think the worst, maybe not the worst, but the most annoying (wasn't expecting it, it was really bad), was when I drove from Idaho to northern New Hampshire with friends in May 2007 and got stuck in rushhour on the 401 through Toronto- we hit it right at about 4:30 PM. Lesson learned from that was stay in the local lanes- the express lanes were just a standstill.
Your plates are from far enough, you could have taken 407.
Sometimes I give in and pay the (too damn high) toll when I know 401 is going to be a mess.
Quote from: Dr Frankenstein on May 08, 2014, 06:26:34 PM
Quote from: corco on May 08, 2014, 02:28:09 PMI think the worst, maybe not the worst, but the most annoying (wasn't expecting it, it was really bad), was when I drove from Idaho to northern New Hampshire with friends in May 2007 and got stuck in rushhour on the 401 through Toronto- we hit it right at about 4:30 PM. Lesson learned from that was stay in the local lanes- the express lanes were just a standstill.
Your plates are from far enough, you could have taken 407.
Sometimes I give in and pay the (too damn high) toll when I know 401 is going to be a mess.
Slightly OT:
Do some of the provinces not charge distant license plates? I was in BC and crossed the Port Mann Bridge, and I didn't think to pay it but they sent me a letter telling me I had to pay it or wouldn't be allowed back into Canada...!? I'm taking a trip across the TCH in July (gonna hit the Stampede) and you are telling me I might get away with using the 407 once I'm in the GTA?
Quote from: Dr Frankenstein on May 08, 2014, 06:26:34 PM
Quote from: corco on May 08, 2014, 02:28:09 PMI think the worst, maybe not the worst, but the most annoying (wasn't expecting it, it was really bad), was when I drove from Idaho to northern New Hampshire with friends in May 2007 and got stuck in rushhour on the 401 through Toronto- we hit it right at about 4:30 PM. Lesson learned from that was stay in the local lanes- the express lanes were just a standstill.
Your plates are from far enough, you could have taken 407.
Sometimes I give in and pay the (too damn high) toll when I know 401 is going to be a mess.
We were in my friend's car with Idaho plates, and I actually did try to talk him into it, but he wasn't interested. I also wasn't entirely sure how to get back from the 407 to the 401- we didn't have a map of Canada with us- it was me just knowing 402->401->20->55, so that was kind of that.
My worst was the one and only time I experienced a Mackinac Bridge closure. I was heading north, from Grand Rapids to Sault Ste. Marie and was making record time (of course), only to find that the bridge was closed due to an accident involving a semi. No problem, I thought, and I exited into a very crowded Mackinaw City and grabbed some dinner. Soon the bridge was back open. I thought heading down to US 23 and backtracking would be my best option... nope. Took an entire hour to get back onto I-75, then another entire hour to cross the 5 mile bridge. Part of that was because there had been a VMS stating that the right lane was closed, but the message turned off shortly before I reached it. I and several other motorists thought that meant the lane had been reopened, but it hadn't. Took a very long time to be let in when everyone thought we were trying to jump the line. The only bright spot is that every northbound tollbooth was open.
A friend of my significant other was caught in the blizzard that closed Highway 402 and trapped cars east of Sarnia, ON for almost a whole day in December 2010. Said that it really wasn't all that bad and truckers periodically offered space for motorists to warm up.
And, extending to other forms of transit, another friend of mine was on an Amtrak train that took 16 hours (http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2008/12/state_asks_amtrak_to_explain_d.html) to travel the 180 miles from Chicago to Grand Rapids, for a variety of stupid reasons.
The most memorable for me would be a minor fender bender I passed on I-87 north. Normally this would not have been a problem, but it was on the Tappan Zee, so instead of sitting in the shoulder, it took up the entire right hand lane. To make matters worse, the movable barrier was favoring the southbound lanes. Traffic backed up three miles onto I-287 when I entered the area and the backup was expanding by the minute, and I wouldn't be surprised if it extended all the way to Connecticut by the time the evening was done. Traffic was moving an average of 1-2 miles per hour and it took two hours to get through.
The next major one I can think of was one trip to back to Clarkson after Thanksgiving on I-81. Traffic was moving 10-20 mph northbound all the way from Parish to Adams. I-81 was southbound, with good reason - this was in the middle of a blizzard and I lost track of the number of cars on the side of the road, including a 20 car pileup on the closed portion. Traffic had to move to the shoulders to allow emergency vehicles to pass multiple times. The northbound lanes were closed shortly after I went through.
As I've always said, you don't know winter driving until you've driven I-81 north of Syracuse in the middle of a blizzard.
Quote from: vdeane on May 08, 2014, 10:10:05 PM
As I've always said, you don't know winter driving until you've driven I-81 north of Syracuse in the middle of a blizzard.
My mom went to Syracuse and I remember her telling me a story about how she woke up for class one morning, and literally the only thing you could see in the parking lot was the antennae of the cars. Like three feet of snow fell and then big drifts followed. Absolutely ridiculous. And they still held class. Ha!
Trying to imagine if that type of weather hit I-5 in the NW USA...what a disaster. Thousands would die.
Quote from: jake on May 09, 2014, 12:04:16 AM
Quote from: vdeane on May 08, 2014, 10:10:05 PM
As I've always said, you don't know winter driving until you've driven I-81 north of Syracuse in the middle of a blizzard.
My mom went to Syracuse and I remember her telling me a story about how she woke up for class one morning, and literally the only thing you could see in the parking lot was the antennae of the cars. Like three feet of snow fell and then big drifts followed. Absolutely ridiculous. And they still held class. Ha!
Trying to imagine if that type of weather hit I-5 in the NW USA...what a disaster. Thousands would die.
Welcome to Houghton, Michigan, where I went to college (Michigan Tech). Somehow they still manage to plow the streets even with over 220 inches of the white stuff per year (Oct - May, inclusive).
There's also a reason people do not usually buy white cars in snow country.
Worst? Maybe when a tanker of ammonia or something similarly unpleasant tipped over at the intersection of 495 and the Mass Pike on a Friday afternoon. Both roads were closed going into the Friday escape/rush hour. Took about 3 hours to get around.
Funniest? In San Diego, when it rained for the second time in six months, causing flummoxed drivers to come to a halt as they struggled to come to grips.
For me, worst wasn't even one in which I sat in the backup directly behind the incident in question. Instead, it was a road in the vicinity.
Let me set the scene. It was Inauguration Day 2013. I took transit up to Colerain Township, Ohio to visit my then-fiancée. This necessitated use of US 27, which intersects I-275 about 12 miles north of downtown.
Well...a heavy snow squall hit at 11:15 AM. Not even 2" of snow fell. By 11:30 AM, Ohio Highway Patrol had to shut down all lanes, both directions, of I-275 at US 27 on the west and US 127 on the east, because about 100 cars piled up on the freeway.
I left Northgate Mall at 2:15 PM. It took me almost 2 hours to go 12 miles.
Saw plenty of em in downtown Chicago just south of the Circle.
But that's small compared to the regular jams that occur on the Hollywood Fwy and the East LA Interchange - not to mention the entire 405 to the 5 southbound from LAX through San Clemente.
I used to work for a supermarket out in Southampton, NY 10 years ago. The supermarket used to have buses that would shuttle the employees in from western Suffolk County. Normally these trips would take about 60-90 minutes. Reminder there's only two ways out there and they get congested during the summer:
- NY 27 which is limited access from western Suffolk County to just west of Southampton. it is multiplexed with Suffolk CR 39 east of the limited access portion and goes north of the main business district of Southampton and then takes over Montauk Hwy. east of Southampton.
- Montauk Hwy./Hill St./Nugent St/Windmill Lane/Hampton Rd. - usually just one lane each way. Goes through the middle of Southampton.
One summer Friday night (correction: it was a Monday) there was a benefit concert to save Southampton College (it didn't work, SUNY Stony Brook took it over a few years later) with I think Billy Joel (correction: Rod Stewart) and some other big names. So both NY 27 and Montauk Hwy. are already congested beyond normal summer weekend traffic. Then there's a fatal accident on NY 27. It took almost 3 and a half hours to get from Southampton to Hampton Bays which normally takes a half an hour at most. Grand total is 5 hours to go from Southampton to Westhampton to Center Moriches to Patchogue.
I have ended up stuck in not moving because all lanes are blocked traffic twice.
The first time was in my parents' '87 Subaru GL, back when it was still "the family car", so that dates the incident to 1995 at the latest. We were on our way home from visiting family and we got stuck northbound on the Major Deegan (I-87) in The Bronx, in the section between exits 9 and 10 where the two carriageways are at different levels (somewhere near here) (https://www.google.com/maps/@40.866408,-73.909038,3a,75y,356.95h,78.64t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sNsg3P7-O84I9ldVixRzEvw!2e0). I don't remember how long we were stuck for, but I do remember that after several minutes of zero movement my father turned the engine off, got out of the car, and walked forward to investigate. He came back a few minutes later saying "yeah, there's a nasty accident, road's closed".
The second time was when I was in high school, we got stuck on the Merritt Parkway during a thunderstorm because a tree fell across the road, about five cars in front of us. No one was hurt but it took about 45 minutes before the fire department cleared enough tree away for one lane of traffic to start getting by.
But at least in these cases, you turn the engine off and wait. Traffic moving very slowly is more aggravating to sit in than traffic that's completely stopped. It once took me an hour to get from exit 40 to exit 48 on I-95 in CT (8 miles). All this because ConnDOT had one lane closed for the weekend relating to construction on the 95/91/34 interchange. Ladies and Gentlemen, Connecticut!
It has also taken me an hour to get into the Holland Tunnel during evening rush hour from 7 blocks away... which is normal, and why you don't do that.
I-55 during rush hour and bad weather in Chicago. What normally takes about 15 minutes between LSD (US-41) and Cicero Ave (IL-50) took an hour