How is the approach of Christmas affecting traffic in your city? Norman is horrible...intersections are severely backed up, and then they back up into other intersections, people waiting to turn left are getting trapped in intersections (causing more backups), and more. Never seen anything like it here.
I've not noticed anything, but I've been home all day.
My trip to work (from SE Pa. to Princeton, NJ) passes by at least three major shopping malls (two very close by). On the normal trip home, U.S. 1 tends to back up for about three miles from the I-95 interchange to my office, but moves reasonably well. Since Thanksgiving, the backups have extended well north of my office and it takes twice as much time to go the same three miles. I cannot wait until after the New Year, when "normal" traffic returns. . .
Every day is WILD in impatient south Florida, Christmas Eve being no exception. Since this is peak "season" here, several million folks are added to the mix on top of the 7 million year-round residents.
Where I originally came from in the rural Hudson Valley south of Albany, everything used to close by 5 or 6 pm and no one went out in the evening. Very little traffic on Christmas Day either. It was one of the few times you would see all the major stores and malls closed and parking lots empty, the way it used to be before many "blue laws" were repealed in the early 1970s.
I am planning to stay 25 miles from the nearest town until at least the 27th!
out of beer, though. dang.
I took nothing but "back roads" (i.e. state and county routes) from FL to GA via AL and encountered no traffic whatsoever...
US 280 in Birmingham goes from heavy traffic most of the time to go another way around Xmas time. They have been many near misses on US 280 westbound just past I-459 due to the close proximity of a major shopping area and people dart into the turn lane for it. That is why I usually will use I-65 when I have to get into town during the Xmas season. I don't travel out there often this time of year, but I suspect that traffic on I-459, US 31, Galleria Blvd, and AL 150 is a mess around the Galleria.
I know I avoid the main shopping area of Battle Creek (centered around Beckley Rd./M-66) because it's a clusterfuck even when it isn't shopping season. The light cycles are simply too short, and that results in ridiculous backups. It doesn't help that the lanes heading out of the Harper Village Shopping Center are poorly implemented (only one left-turn lane and a lane for straight and right-turning traffic for each approach). Granted, Westnedge Avenue in Portage might see more traffic, but at least that city can handle it competently (most of those lights using split phasing for the side streets/shopping-center exits, with most approaches with a dedicated left, a left-through, and dedicated right lanes).
Quote from: Scott5114 on December 23, 2009, 08:26:19 PM
How is the approach of Christmas affecting traffic in your city? Norman is horrible...intersections are severely backed up, and then they back up into other intersections, people waiting to turn left are getting trapped in intersections (causing more backups), and more. Never seen anything like it here.
After my experience in the Walmart parking lot at the beginning of December (my taillight got broken in the parking lot...), I've been avoiding Walmart like the plague. I was out today (currently I'm at my parents' house for Christmas), and the traffic in LaVale, MD, was atrocious.
Quote from: algorerhythms on December 23, 2009, 11:53:00 PM
Quote from: Scott5114 on December 23, 2009, 08:26:19 PM
How is the approach of Christmas affecting traffic in your city? Norman is horrible...intersections are severely backed up, and then they back up into other intersections, people waiting to turn left are getting trapped in intersections (causing more backups), and more. Never seen anything like it here.
After my experience in the Walmart parking lot at the beginning of December (my taillight got broken in the parking lot...), I've been avoiding Walmart like the plague. I was out today (currently I'm at my parents' house for Christmas), and the traffic in LaVale, MD, was atrocious.
It wasn't just Walmart...I was trying to go to my old Burger King to get some dinner, then head south to McClain County. It took me about ten minutes to get from Robinson to Main. Then there was some kind of incident on the Main Street bridge over I-35, which was causing the already-iffy Ed Noble Pkwy/Main Street intersection to fail badly. EB Main traffic kept backing up into the intersection, and people trying to make the SB Ed Noble to EB Main movement were getting trapped in the intersection on red due to this. NB Ed Noble Parkway was backed up all the way to Olive Garden as a result...
Meanwhile, where Ed Noble ends at Lindsey Street, there were backups due to the leftmost left turn bay being filled to capacity. The tailback went all the way to the IHOP/Home Depot driveway.
I-35 continued to move fine, if a bit heavy, the entire time.
Traffic to the airport is heavier than normal. Mainly because you can't make it far by car in such short time. :-P
Plesant Hill Road and Lawrenceville/Suwanee Hwy here in Gwinnett County Georgia (Middle of Suburban Atlanta) is Off The Chain! Traffic gets so backed up from the malls/Wal-Marts out here that it spills onto other side streets and sometimes it spills onto the off-ramps of the interstate
Perfect example is Plesant Hill Road at Gwinnett Place Mall, traffic can spill onto the ramps of I-85 which is 20 lanes overall in that area including Collector/Distributor lanes...
On a sidenote, Atlanta Interstates are off the chain as well since most people from up north go through the "A" (Atlanta) to get to Florida, not to Mention that College students come back into the city to see their parents for X-Mas
Gawd the Ills of X-Mas!
There was the usual I-95 Springfield-to-Fredericksburg mess yesterday afternoon, but that's nothing out of the ordinary at the beginning of any long weekend...
Another thing I noticed on the way back from the airport was that in Hagerstown, the traffic going to the mall was so heavy that it caused the traffic on I-81 to back up so much that it was backed up onto the right lane of I-70.
Salt Lake is usually pretty tolerable, but two days ago a snowstorm hit - I traveled a span of six blocks (21st South to Richmond St) in twenty minutes in a primarily commercial area. And Utah drivers are infamous for their un-signaled lane changes, overly aggressive driving, unwillingness to let one merge, etc ... :banghead:
The morning commute in Sacramento was much, much lighter than usual...even the metering lights were off! On a weekday!
Christmas Traffic (Mall of Georgia) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FG1OrMoeW1w)
Be well,
Bryant
Christmas Eve in the Philadelphia area!
(https://www.aaroads.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Flh6.ggpht.com%2F_ZkmN2RrOJxw%2FSzOhF6jDwTI%2FAAAAAAAASJw%2Fn9-a95QmcD4%2Fs640%2FIMG_1446.JPG&hash=3c79c94c2816852c2dd059e07beffa36a5cd7fa5)
If you are from CT you'll stay as far away from Manchester as your car or truck will take you on any Christmas Eve. It sucks 24/7 around those malls as it is, but God bless the person who wants to get involved in THAT today.
Traffic? What traffic? Traffic was fine here in Portland...
(I did see that the southbound lanes were jammed on I-205 over Division St, presumably because of Clackamas Town Center five miles south... but traffic was very smooth around Lloyd Center, the mall across the river from downtown. *shrug*)
Oh I'm sure traffic is perfectly quiet today - given nobody's working except health care, law enforcement and, in the stormy areas - road crews plowing.
Quote from: Master son on December 25, 2009, 09:14:06 AM
Oh I'm sure traffic is perfectly quiet today - given nobody's working except health care, law enforcement and, in the stormy areas - road crews plowing.
And no doubt they are on double pay
Quote from: Tomahawkin on December 24, 2009, 04:33:08 AM
Plesant Hill Road and Lawrenceville/Suwanee Hwy here in Gwinnett County Georgia (Middle of Suburban Atlanta) is Off The Chain! Traffic gets so backed up from the malls/Wal-Marts out here that it spills onto other side streets and sometimes it spills onto the off-ramps of the interstate
Perfect example is Plesant Hill Road at Gwinnett Place Mall, traffic can spill onto the ramps of I-85 which is 20 lanes overall in that area including Collector/Distributor lanes...
On a sidenote, Atlanta Interstates are off the chain as well since most people from up north go through the "A" (Atlanta) to get to Florida, not to Mention that College students come back into the city to see their parents for X-Mas
Gawd the Ills of X-Mas!
Yeah, I-85 through Gwinnett is always a mess, despite its girth. Christmastime's just made the traffic delays worse.
Speaking of Atlanta, I got caught in horrendous traffic, as I entered Downtown on I-85 (on Tuesday). The back-up started just south of Georgia 400, and lasted through the Grady Curve. This was about 7:00, 7:30.
Be well,
Bryant
Makes me wonder how well the 401's been coping...
This afternoon was a doozy. I-95 South was seeing delays pretty much all the way from Springfield to Fredericskburg. And as if that wasn't enough, the backup extended along the Inner Loop all the way over to the Wilson Bridge and into Maryland. A combination of shopping traffic (there's 2 major malls along I-95...Springfield Mall and Potomac Mills), crappy weather, and returning-from-Christmas traffic all contributed to the mess.
Quote from: froggie on December 26, 2009, 07:42:39 PM
This afternoon was a doozy. I-95 South was seeing delays pretty much all the way from Springfield to Fredericskburg. And as if that wasn't enough, the backup extended along the Inner Loop all the way over to the Wilson Bridge and into Maryland. A combination of shopping traffic (there's 2 major malls along I-95...Springfield Mall and Potomac Mills), crappy weather, and returning-from-Christmas traffic all contributed to the mess.
That stretch is almost ALWAYS bad during the holidays. I had the (dis)pleasure of having to drive that stretch during thanksgiving weekend. We actually stopped in Stafford to shop while it died down.
Anyway, Christmas traffic was really bad in Atlanta. Last week, I was in the process of moving from Kennesaw to Decatur, and I had to get the last of my things, but I couldn't get back up to Kennesaw until 9 o clock that night due to the traffic and congestion on I-75 in Cobb County. I avoided the Lenox Square/Phipps Plaza in Buckhead as much as possible as well.
I went home to Mississippi for the holidays, and while there was no heavy congestion on I-20, traffic was pretty heavy.
Bad again today...Inner Loop backup at the Wilson Bridge again, extending onto 95 South and the radio is reporting that the backup continues most of the way to Richmond. No weather today, so this is just straight traffic. Thankfully, the Local Lanes were clear across the WWB so I could get home.
The I-95 congestion in this area is one reason God (or the respective state DOTs) created US 1 and US 301.
Driving back from Arkansas to Columbus, OH yesterday, I was on I-65N from Nashville to Louisville. I saw cars at a stand-still for approximately 20 miles (yes, that's right) from south of Elizabethtown (near Sonora) south to past Bonnieville (where you pass from Eastern Time Zone to Central Time Zone). This section of I-65 is just two-lanes on each side, so I imagine that it's prone to congestion, but this is the longest continuous section of stopped traffic that I've ever seen in this area. I didn't see any indication of a traffic accident or anything...just stopped traffic. It was very strange.
I think there had been an accident in this area. It was probably just a remnant of the backup from the crash. Right now there's a backup southbound as Kentucky traffic heads to Nashville for UK's football bowl game.
Quote from: hbelkins on December 27, 2009, 05:13:44 PM
I think there had been an accident in this area. It was probably just a remnant of the backup from the crash. Right now there's a backup southbound as Kentucky traffic heads to Nashville for UK's football bowl game.
That's good to know. A lot of this route has been upgraded to 6-lanes, which moves very well, but the sections that are still 4-lane seem to be prone to a lot of issues. They must have just cleaned up the accident when I passed; I was really glad I was on the northbound side instead of the southbound side yesterday!
There have been a lot of crossover accidents in this area, so cable barriers have been or will be installed along the remaining four-lane stretch until the widening to six lanes is complete.
QuoteThe I-95 congestion in this area is one reason God (or the respective state DOTs) created US 1 and US 301.
It's not that easy (nevermind that US 1 and US 301 pre-date I-95).
US 1 is stoplight/commercial hell pretty much all the way from the Pentagon to Dumfries, with several other slow-down areas south of there and through Fredericksburg. When there's trouble on I-95, US 1 is the first place drivers bail to, which means it doesn't last long as a reliever route. About the only place in Virginia where US 1 is an effective alternative to I-95 is between the south end of Fredericksburg and I-295.
As for US 301, it has a 2-lane toll bridge that is a known bottleneck in its own right, especially on summer weekends. Not to mention 55 traffic signals between Carmel Church and Bowie, 46 of those on the 37 miles between La Plata and Bowie (that's over 1 a mile)...
Lots of post Christmas and Snowbird traffic on just about every north-south Interstate I took the last two days. Even the snow throughout central Illinois was not cutting down on traffic.
Everyone flocks to the Interstates this time of year; I took US 64 in southern Tennessee and was one of only two cars on it. Took US 331 south from Montgomery and faced very little traffic as compared to the busier than normal I-65...