I grew up in New Jersey, the most densely populated state. And I lived in Los Angeles, where the 405 is one of the most congested arteries in the country (giving rise to the term road rage, I believe). But, for my money, the worst road in the country is I-76, known as the Schuylkill Expressway. As Will Bunch recently discovered, the Schuylkill can nail you at any time of day. I recently got caught in a traffic jam there at one in the morning. The road, which runs from Philly to King of Prussia along a narrow planed surface between a hillside and the Schuylkill River, just cannot be expanded to include more lanes.
When the terrorists finally plant that dirty bomb in the Liberty Bell, everyone is going to die on the Schuylkill Expressway.
What are your traffic/travel woes?
A few weeks ago I drove through New York en route to New Hampshire…my first driving trip to the eastern side of the country.
I think the whole region needs to adopt a new slogan : “Taking the free out of freeway.” I must have paid $100 in tolls over the course of the trip.
Why do we drive on the parkway and park in the driveway?
Just we get high on the freeway…
*cuz
A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk, I have a work station . . .
25,000 students, [25% of the total population] all with cars, in a 148 year old city with narrow streets and a semi-functional traffic engineering department…think cambridge, mass. with steep hills.
and don’t even think about driving during home football games…have to add another 50k for that.
christmas and summer breaks are delightful.
lTMF’sA
I wonder what grand investment in infrastructure we’ll make after THIS war. Fix the water systems? Nah, private enterprise will cover that with household filters (therefor, leakage waste must be ok). Fix the interstate highway system? Railways? Nah. We’ll just invest in a new superhighway to bring goods (people?) deep into America’s heartland without being fettered by the additional hassle of border inspections/checks (a brilliant plan from a Security standpoint). Or maybe we’ll build the rest of that border fence..
You must then be familiar with the Palaski (sp.?) Skyway in North Jersey: a narrow two-lane elevated with barely enough space for two cars to pass going in opposite directions. It can hardly qualify as infrastructure: a nightmare, like a horrifying ride in a fun park which you have to stick out to the end.
The nightmare of getting out of my own town, once a sleepy rural hamlet but now a more of a bedroom community, in the morning. The number of residents has increased steadily but the roads are virtually the same as they were in the nineteenth century.
Thank your town council for letting the developers go wild!
Even scarier that the traffic jams on the Schuykill is just how vulnerable that roadway is to some sort of attack.
I’d be worried about an attack on the Schuylkill Expressway itself than on the Liberty Bell.
Shit. That probably put me on some asshole’s watchlist, didn’t it. Well fuck it, ya sunsabitches ruined the economy, so I couldn’t afford a european vacation anyway.
yeah, it wouldn’t be that hard to topple the whole thing into the river at some points. Of course, a simple car accident shut it down for 5 hours. No need to attack it.
I once drove on the Schuylkill Expressway about 19 years ago after college when looking goto post-grad schools in Philly. It is the most horrible experience driving, you can’t get off the @#$% road—If I remember right there’s about 4 exits for the road.
once you get past the City Line/Route 1 interchange, you have about 4 exits.
my favorite part of the schuylkill expressway is that there are no merge lanes, not even for those dangerous left-hand entrance ramps. You’re forced to go walleyed watching the front and rear of your vehicle as you nail the gas, hoping to get up to speed before the car looming behind you crashes into your rear bumper.
freakin’ insane.
Have you ever driven on the Cross Bronx Expressway? I’ll take the Schuylkill any time over that fiasco.
I challenge you to drive the Schuylkill from King of Prussia to Philly and back 3 times in a single week…you will think the Cross Bronx looks like a dream. The Schuylkill even sucks on the weekend at midday.
Waiting for the subway when I’m running late.
If you’re ever in Barcelona, stay off the streets and take the metro. In the US, my heart hasn’t really been in my throat since I was last on the Long Island Expressway, not knowing exactly where the exits were.
in santa clarita this week…
Yeah, all of our escape routes are piss poor. Not much you can do about it that doesn’t involve blowing up large sections of town, so we’re stuck with it until we leave or die. My answer, for years, and the only real solution, was getting rid of my car and not driving at all. Overall, I’d have to say that I find driving on the BQE a bit more vomit inducing than the Surekill Crawlway, but that’s probably because the traffic actually moves from time to time.
Here in Corpus Christi we really don’t have traffic as most people know it, even for a town of about 350K. But they really need to change the logo from ‘Sparkling City by the Sea’ to something like ‘Palm Trees and Potholes’. We have about the worst street repair system I’ve ever seen and some of the worst streets you will ever wreck your front end on.
A morning suburban permajam, exacerbated by policies that reward sprawl, and a cowardly, racist hostility to transit expansion (meaning transit that moves.)
Here in Maryland, we have jams but we pay substantial taxes on gasoline and get our money’s worth. In general, roads are well-built and well-maintained. Pennsylvania is infamous down here for failing to invest in its road infrastructure; you can often tell 1/4 mile in from the state line that the roads are relatively neglected. Around Harrisburg the ramps are obscenely designed. At least Philly has good public transit running parallel with the Schuylkill (the Main Line regional rail and 100 line, the other regional rail running through Manayunk to Norristown.) Unlike Pennsylvania, Maryland is fairly wealthy overall and has a LOT fewer lane miles to maintain.