What was your worst traffic jam?

[fiveohwblow]

Told my parents how great BC was and how close it was to home (Portland) and that they should join me.

And it was... great in BC. But, on the way home just outside of Tacompton an artist formerly known as Christina Aguilera finished her latest train wreck at the Tacoma dome. Took over 5 hours to go 4 miles past it on the i5. What should have been a four hour drive home took nearly 10. Couldn’t get them to go with me again. I blame them not.

Still love BC

[MBM340]

Originally Posted by zx10guy

My commute through DC metro area traffic was 40 to 50 miles one way. Did that for 12 years. Was glad the Govie manager allowed me to have flex time where I would come in late and close up the office. Managed to put 176k miles in 8 years on a 2006 Focus bought new.

Traffic and cost of living here are a total shit show. I can't wait to get out of here when I retire and move to the South where I belong. I believe you on the mileage and flex time must have been nice. I had to take a govie job even though I didn't want to and there are some perks but the quagmire that is DC is hard to deal with in so many ways.

[M_Six]

Originally Posted by zx10guy

My commute through DC metro area traffic was 40 to 50 miles one way. Did that for 12 years. Was glad the Govie manager allowed me to have flex time where I would come in late and close up the office. Managed to put 176k miles in 8 years on a 2006 Focus bought new.

We drove to a conference in DC a couple of years ago and when we got to the DC area, we just opted for the lanes where there seemed to be little traffic. Turned out those were the DC express lanes with serious toll charges. We had a transponder that worked with the DC toll system, but holy crap, that was an expensive few miles. Although if I had to do it again, I'd grab the pricey lanes again as the other choice was a nightmare traffic jam.

[zx10guy]

Originally Posted by M_Six

We drove to a conference in DC a couple of years ago and when we got to the DC area, we just opted for the lanes where there seemed to be little traffic. Turned out those were the DC express lanes with serious toll charges. We had a transponder that worked with the DC toll system, but holy crap, that was an expensive few miles. Although if I had to do it again, I'd grab the pricey lanes again as the other choice was a nightmare traffic jam.

Yep. Those express lanes were named "Lexus" Lanes. The toll adjusts depending on traffic conditions. The more traffic on the non toll lanes the more expensive the express lanes get.

The traffic here is so nuts that a former coworker that lives in Cali near Silicon Valley made a comment about how messed up traffic is here.

[Germanauto]

Had to go from west LA to a town normally 1 hr east.

Left at 1pm on a weekday. Shit took 3.5 hours smh.

[Bunnny]

I used to attend a music festival every year on a secluded plot of land/farm. About 15,000 to 16,000 people usually show up and there was a small gate entry, after a 10km turn off the highway. I've waited 8 hours one year in that line in the blazing heat to get in. Some people who show up too late in the day to line up, end up waiting until the next day.
Then to leave, they used to kick everyone out on monday morning, and that was another 5 to 6 hour wait if you got packed and asses in the vehicle early. They started just letting people stay for safety reasons, and it got better. :lol

[Tommy-G]

I lived in the burbs of NJ and was commuting out to Long Island to possibly buy into a bodyshop. It was a 37 mile commute that took 50 minutes in the morning and 1.5 hours at night.

I was coming home one night through Manhattan and Obama was at the Rockefeller tree. It took me 4 hours to get across Manhattan and 20 minutes to get home once I got across the Hudson. Worst part was it was raining so you had nothing but rolled up windows and wipers the whole trip.

[GenXer]

I-95 going into and out of DC while towing a 30 foot camping trailer.
The brakes on the trailer were red hot and fading after a while, causing the trailer to nudge into the tow vehicle every stop. Plus the hot brakes were slow to release causing the tow vehicle to pull even harder. Combine with nerve wrecking fuel consumption from a 3 ton vehicle pulling a 3.5 ton trailer. The average fuel economy was slumping in mid single digit. The 24 gallon fuel tank normally last comfortably about 300 miles. By the time we got there it was estimating about 30 miles range,

I would have been going into a traffic jam into causing a traffic jam if I ran out of fuel.

Fortunately it cleared out enough to get to a gas station.

[Joekerr]

I'd say mine was a 96 car pileup on the highway, in between exits with a median blocking us. I was about car 34 apparently. My boss was initially skeptical as I had a meeting that morning that I clearly was going to miss, until they turned on the news and accepted my story. I think you could even see the land rover I was driving at the time in one of the helicopter shots.

We sat in our cars from about 8:30am to 1:00pm until the police and construction crews were able to cut through the median and start running a bus the wrong side up the highway (they closed down the highway on both sides obviously) to a shelter to keep us warm and start towing all 96 cars. Think I ultimately got home sans a vehicle around 6pm.

[fiveohwblow]

Ironic I got this sent to me today... not mine but..


https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-55359771

[Tommy-G]

Originally Posted by fiveohwblow

Ironic I got this sent to me today... not mine but..


https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-55359771

Holy Schnikies

[M_Six]

Originally Posted by fiveohwblow

Ironic I got this sent to me today... not mine but..


https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-55359771

Yeah, that's a nasty one.

[infinitekidM2C]

One time i was coming back with friends from a rock show in hollywood. Freeway shut down from what i presume was a bad crash or car chase. Pulled off the freeway using the side illegally and into the hood. Two minutes in some crackhead hit my car while driving. Cops wouldnt even pursue even though we flagged a cop down like a minute later. Told us to get the feck outta there and call insurance later.

[ramman434]

Headed home from ATL to Nashville in 2015 with my then gf (now wife) and 2 friends in the back seat of my E92. We were on the north side of Chattanooga on I-75N, and if anyone knows that area, it's notorious for slow driving trucks in the mountains on 2-lane hwy.

It was night and we were coming on this straight where it opens to 3 lanes, and I loved to get into triple digits when I could. Came around the corner onto this straight and found standstill traffic. Come to a stop, and realize that below us, through the trees, there are no headlights coming through the trees at all.

This straight away is around a mile long and then flows into a large 1/2mi S-curve & back to 2 lanes, where the southbound lanes start to slope down an incline, instead of being level w/northbound.
After 2.5hrs to make it about 1.25mi to that S-curve, we found that someone had crossed the median as the southbound slope started, crashed through the steel wire guard rails and taken out another car head on. There was a helicopter on-site for a life flight, and another circling.

It was terrible to see, and myself and hundreds of other cars were bottlenecked to the shoulder to pass. The entire southbound lanes were completely closed off, and I've never seen so many headlights. As we got going, the traffic jam on the southbound side was easily 6-7 mi long.

[UncleWede]

1976. New Volvo station wagon riding east to go to grandparents in Iowa. In the Mojave, just at dusk, we hit a sandstorm. Couldn't see a thing beyond the windshield. He tried a few times to follow a semi, but 10MPH was too fast for his comfort.

About 3 miles of that he pulled into a gas station, and we slept the night away.

Insurance gave him $1K for windshield/paint. HE was able to get a new windshield, but I never could wash that car when I inherited it. OK, I could WASH it, but couldn't dry it.

[4Hockey4]

Everyday in NOVA/DC. (my top 5 from there, that include nasty ones in NY city and Chicago) I spent my first 34 years there, thats no way to spend life. #YOLO

(of course until the last 5 or so, it wasn't bad...we left there in 02' after 9/11 tech bust. We go up for Caps games and kids hockey over the years, no one should have to endure that)

[cmyx6go]

Nothing as bad as some stories above.

It took me 2 hours to cross the Tapan Zee bridge from NY to NJ due to a torrential rain storm. It boggled my brain that a bridge could have a flooded roadway.

It took 3 hours to go 2 miles on the NJ turnpike a few years back. Came to a dead stop between exits due to a truck accident

Normal traffic nightmares- Any Sunday night coming home from my aunts house in Suffolk County LI back to Brooklyn when I was a kid. Bumper to bumper rolling all the way in the car with my 3 siblings and my parents. Sometimes grandma too. Worst part was parents listening to the doo woop 50s music all the way. Shoot me please.

Hello. I am already waiting for the development of applications for traffic regulation. Something like a messenger, just for drivers. I think it will be interesting.

[spazzyfry123]

Originally Posted by vreihen16

Back in 1989, I spent the better part of a day sitting at a dead stop on the Garbage State Parking Lot around Bloomfield, NJ. I was ferrying a Yugo between family members as a favor, and was handed Parkway toll tokens for the trip. (I would have taken the Turnpike if it was my car, even if it was a longer drive and cost more.)

There was a popup thunderstorm in front of me, and anyone familiar with the Parkway at that time knows that there was an underpass around mile marker 145 (East Orange) that was notorious for flooding. I sat there for hours at a dead stop, engine off, on a sunny afternoon. Remembering that this was 1989 and cell phones were a car-mounted novelty, I was glad that I did a portable installation of my car phone for this trip. (This was probably the only Yugo in the world with a car phone.)

Anyway, there was a van being driven by a clown (you can't make this stuff up) stuck in the lane next to me, and he saw me making a call on the car phone to say that I was going to be late for dinner so don't wait for me. He was on the way to a kid's birthday party with a van full of cake and ice cream, and asked if he could use my phone to cancel the gig because he obviously wasn't going to make it there. A few minutes later, he came back over and offered me a chocolate ice cream cone and a soda to drink. After that, he decided to throw a party for everyone who was stuck there, giving out the ice cream and other stuff before it melted or went bad. He even did his clown show!

While it was most certainly the worst traffic jam I've ever been in (and I still have two Parkway tokens to remember it by), how many people can say that they attended a kid's birthday party in the middle of the Parkway with a performing clown, ice cream, cake, and soda?

Oh, in case anyone was curious, I arrived at my destination shortly before midnight...and stopped at White Castle for the dinner that I was 6+ hours late for.....

I think you missed the point of the thread.

That is clearly the BEST traffic jam!

[longm1985]

Pretty much nothing compared to some of your stories.... But 4 hours on 94 West in Milwaukee sucked.

This area gets clogged up every weekend there's a Packer game in a normal season.

My FAVORITE was definitely getting stuck in traffic around Oshkosh for the EAA AirVenture. I'm just stopped on 41 N heading toward home in my work van (Sprinter with a huge windshield), and here I can watch a MiG 15 duking it out with an F86 Sabre over my head. That was amazing. Totally didn't mind being stuck in traffic while that was happening.

[bigrum]

It was real stop and go by inches gridlock on I-5 and the clutch on my '91 CRX died on me. I had to leave it in first gear at all times, crank the ignition to lurch forward, and turn the key off to stop again. That cycle over and over for hours.

Also have a buddy that had to go so bad but stuck in traffic he just pissed himself. No Gatorade bottle or anything.

[spazzyfry123]

Buddy picked me up out in BFE, Alabama to head back to Atlanta from a family gig. About an hour into the ride we hit a wall of parked cars - probably took us about 4 hours to get two miles. We finally said screw it and got off at the next exit seeing a Cracker Barrel to pass the time. Right as we got off the exit, we then realized that just on the other side of the overpass had we stayed in traffic was the accident they were clearing. However, they blocked the on-ramp and we had no way to get back onto the interstate.

Seeing that this was pre Google Maps and we had no map of our own, we had to ask a trooper how to get back to the interstate. Long story short, had we just stayed on our original path we would have been clear for take off in about thirty minutes. Since we decided to hop off, our new detour took us an additional three hours to get back to the interstate since we had no clue where we were. A trip that normally would have been about five hours took us about twelve or so.

Bonus points: When we made it to Atlanta, a tornado hit and we got pelted with hail stuck in a classic Atlanta "oh it's raining, I'll stop here" traffic jams.