The worst traffic experience of my life!

[NCC]

I'm no spring chicken, been driving for forty years.
And today was the worst traffic I've ever seen.
After watching Shuttle Discovery rocket into space (Yippie!!!!) I hung around my car for more than an hour waiting for traffic to lighten up. There was a traffic light a couple hundred yards down the road from me and cars were taking 15 minutes to get to it, starting in front of me. No lie!

The launch was at 4:53PM. About quarter past six, I couldn't take the waiting any longer and decided to pull into the "flow" (tongue in cheek). For 50 miles I averaged 9 miles per hour. Do the math ... yep,
five and a half hours to travel 50 miles. Unreal.

 

[Kreep]

Lol - sounds like a Tuesday evening where I come from.

 

[Cee_Jay]

Happens twice daily in our nations capital.

 

[NCC]

Come on y'all. You can't tell me it's routine to take five and a half hours to travel 50 miles.
And that doesn't include the hour+ that I waited before I even attempted it, which would've been at a virtual stand still.
I understand you have traffic issues, but no doubt you're exaggerating

 

[Cee_Jay]

exaggerating ? . . . . . . NOT. Last time I transversed (at the wrong time) the loop it took 90 minutes to go less than 3 miles.

 

[AngusATAT]

I saw the thread title, and thought you drove through Atlanta.

 

[angelique510]

I have to second the comment on D.C. traffic. I've been there once, for a Tea Party thing in November '09. We left at around 5pm, several hours after the event ended. It was close to ten o'clock before we got up to the speed limit heading out of town. My husband is a truck driver and once spent four hours crossing the George Washington Bridge.

Of course this doesn't make what happened to the OP any less frustrating. We're just saying "We've been there - and it sucked."

~A

 

[Airbrusher]

Living in so cal is no joke on the traffic... home of the 405 one of the few true freeways that is at capacity. And Kreep ain't kiddin... the 91 on any given day is like that... and this isn't LA traffic either.

 

[NCC]

exaggerating ? . . . . . . NOT. Last time I transversed (at the wrong time) the loop it took 90 minutes to go less than 3 miles.

1.5 hours would've been a pleasure, compared to 5.5 hours, trust me. 50 miles folks.

I saw the thread title, and thought you drove through Atlanta.

I've been through Atlanta, during "rush hour" even, on a number of occasions. Child's play.

Anyway, to all, I live near Panama City Beach. During Spring Break on the beach traffic is every bit as bad as the experience I related in post #1. But, it doesn't go on for 50 miles and 5.5 hours. That's what distinguished my nightmare from all other traffic I've experienced.

Yeah, traffic sucks. No matter if it's 5 minutes or 5 hours. But, duration like the later is maddening. Four decades of driving, I've seen some bad traffic. Thursday took the cake. Be glad you weren't there.
[/whine]

 

[NCC]

Oh, BTW, much of the time traffic was so slow (or at a stand still) that people were conversing with people next to them in traffic. There were people from all over the Eastern US. Nobody I spoke with had seen anything like it either.

So, yeah, tell us about your worst traffic nightmare. You've heard more than you wanted to hear about mine, LOL.

 

[Cee_Jay]

Then there was the time we got stuck on the NYS thruway (in snow) for 10 hours . . . . it's happened twice since, but not me.

 

[tenzip]

The worst traffic I've been in was in the middle of nowhere, otherwise known as western Missouri. Interstate between KC and Columbia, somewhere in there. Eastbound lanes just stopped for 4 hours. No movement. None. And then it just started moving again. Westbound was unaffected, as far as I could tell.

I never did find out what happened. Never saw any kind of emergency vehicle, road works, or smashed-up vehicles.

Lots of folks running through the snow in the ditch to use the facilities. Bushes, that is. I had an empty pop bottle, or I'd have been one of them.

I'm sure glad I had a book along.