What is the WORST traffic jam you have ever been in??

[SmileyBoy]

This might sound weird to you, but here's mine:

It was in August, 2003 in Gatineau, Quebec. Just across the river from Ottawa. My family and I were in the middle of a summer road trip, and we decided that after we saw some sights in Ottawa, that we'd go across the river to Quebec. We start along onto a road that goes across from downtown Ottawa, and we run into what looks like a London evacuation scene from 28 Days Later. THREE AND A HALF HOURS OF PURE GRIDLOCK. I've driven in Chicago, and I have never seen anything as bad there as I saw in Gatineau. We move an average of 10 feet in two minutes, it seems. We go at a SNAIL'S PACE across the bridge, into Quebec, and finally the traffic dissapates after we get into the Gatineau suburbs (:shrug:). We decide to stop in a shopping mall, but before we get inside, we read a sign that the mall closes at 5pm on Tuesdays. (It was Tuesday that day). We were like, :wtf: There was a civic holiday weekend for all of Canada that following weekend, but it was Tuesday, fer chrissakes. We then go to some other stores in the city, and it appears that EVERYTHING in that town closes up on Tuesdays at 5pm for some weird reason. We then stop somewhere back in Ottawa, and things are open until their normal time (8pm, 9pm, 10pm) on the other side of the river. I've always thought that the early store closings and the traffic jam were related to each other in some way. Are French Canadians hurrying home early to do some weird-ass shit every Tuesday evening that the rest of us North Americans don't know about??:D

Anyway, what's your story??

[izzybeans]

1. Snow storm on NJ-18 in New Brunswick New Jersey.

1.5 miles in 2 hours. My radio was stuck on the Jersey Guys. Absolutely horrid.

[SmileyBoy]

2. Who are the Jersey Guys??

Lemme guess, right-wing radio??

[izzybeans]

3. Not just right wing radio, but apolitical right wing radio, which means

I'm in for 2 hours of why they hate not buying their deli sandwich from jewish guys because all the delis have been bought up by the "damn hindus". "I mean what has this world come to, I've got to by my inside-out from some dot-head now." That type of crap. 2 hours in Jersey traffic listening to that shit makes izzybeans a dull boy.

[Whoa_Nelly]

4. Sierra snow storm, although have had some Los Angeles gridlock fun....

After a fun Looooong day drive of through southern CA, then Death Valley, visiting Scotty's Castle along the way, (check out Scotty's! http://www.nps.gov/deva/Scottys/Scottys_main.htm), drove up to Reno, then over the Sierra Summit.

Big snowstorm just in and 7 hours of driving behind a snowplow...long time in one place without really moving....

[Missy Vixen]

5. The Rolling Stones were playing in Seattle a few years back

I was stopped on 520 (floating bridge between Seattle and Kirkland, for those who don't live here,) for two and a half hours. Did I mention that it's 13 miles from where I was stuck to downtown Seattle? When the traffic finally started to move again, it took almost 4 hours to get there.

Second worst: I was stuck on 520 going back to my college in Kirkland because of a very bad car accident further up the span. I don't know how many hours we were there, but I do remember multiple people relieving themselves off the side of the bridge...

DH's story is far more lurid than mine. In the blizzard of 1990 (yes, it's possible to have a blizzard in Seattle,) it took him eight hours to get to Northgate (North Seattle,) from downtown Seattle.

Julie

[MiniMandaRuth]

25. Sweet jebus...

Eight hours from northgate to downtown?!

[u4ic]

6. I can think of three

can't tell you which one was worse.

#1 1979 - going back into the city after an evacuation. It was 1979, and all of my city (Mississauga, Ontario) had to be evacuated because of a train derailment and explosion. The box cars contained lovelies like chlorine and a lot of carcinogenic/toxic gases/compounds. If they all blew...lots of us would die.

The whole city - 250,000 - had to evacuate on a moment's notice.

Coming back...well, you've got a huge percentage of those people trying to get back home after having been evacuated for 4 days. Took us hours to move inches on the QueenE going back into the city (from Oakville/Hamilton/Niagara Falls way).

After that, the gov't changed the rules so dangerous chemicals wouldn't go through the downtown of cities. D'uh. (there were no injuries or deaths, btw)


#2 1985 - Going into NYC the Sunday afternoon after a May long weekend. Stuck on the coach. People ahead of us were taking their dogs out for walks. A very interesting time, and it was rather fun. We were supposed to get into the city by 6 or 7pm; got in at 1am. (but it was a bit of fun after, as we decided to take a walk. The streets were full of garbage, and somehow we (18 year olds) had ascertained we had reached Harlem, and ran back to our hotel right across from the Lincoln Centre for the Performing Arts. I doubt our 3 block walk didn't take us near Harlem. But I did get a lesson that not every city was as clean as Toronto.

#3 late 80's - Yet another one where it took hours to move inches. The 401 in Toronto; there was a horrible bus accident on the other side of the road (the widest part of the 401 has 16 lanes, btw; 8 are express).

I remember it stood out not for the time standing still, but for an awful incident; the above (school) bus driver had her leg amputated in the process; a good samaritan (working class immigrant, as I recall) stopped to comfort her, as she was dying. Some a$$hole stole that guy's paycheque out of his van. :grr:

[Telly Savalas]

46. Times have changed.

If there was such a train derailment in the GTA these days, it would result in a 5% bump in the air quality index, not an evacuation.

:)

[LSK]

7. took 2 hours to get to a White Sox game last year

Left at 5 and got there after 7. We finally gave up on the highways (Eisenhower for locals) and got there via side streets. We were coming from the Woodfield area (suburbs).

I also drove to school in downtown Chicago (UIC) from the suburbs for a few years. After a while I wised up and took MetraRail.

[Parrcrow]

8. Blizzard in and around Toronto

took 5 hours to get from Mississauga to Hamilton (about 30 miles)

[SmileyBoy]

9. Toronto traffic is a real bitch.

My father told me that it's the worst city to drive in. There's no signage, either. If you want to get off on an exit on 401 or 400 or wherever, there's no sign to tell you where up ahead the exit is.

[TrogL]

31. I think I was in that one

Part of the problem was the big bridge over Hamilton harbour. There was a four-car pile up blocking both Toronto-bound lanes. They couldn't even get police cars and tow trucks up there to deal with it until a police car drove up the non-existant centre lane honking and waving for people to move to the sides.

[CanuckAmok]

39. The dreaded Burlington Skyway.

My worst jam ever was at the north end of the QEW where it cloverleafs onto the 427 to the airport. There had been a fatal rollover at the end of the ramp, and I happened to be about 50 cars behind it. Didn't see it, but I was trapped on the exit for about 6 hours.

Missed my flight, too.

[Parrcrow]

42. this would have been

sometime in the winter of 2000/2001. We got a couple of feet of snow starting about noon or so. The roads were terrible by rush hour.

[Guava Jelly]

10. running from hurricane charlie

damn thing cut my vacation 3 days short had a killer condo and everything

[L A Woman]

11. it was all Sophia Loren's fault!!!

Naples, Italy. 1989. My so-called "friend" suggested we go see Sophia Loren's birthplace. Fine, I said. Then we sat on the same street for hours....a street with NO side streets (odd) and no way to turn around. Hours, I tell you. We never made it to Sophia's.

[BurgherHoldtheLies]

12. I-64 through Williamsburg-Chesapeake on our way to the Outer Banks

Nothing out-of-the-ordinary going on (like royalty or movie star or accidents or terra-terra-terra events) this was just the "normal" summer vacation traffic. We learned our lesson and now avoid that area like the plague.

BRUTALLY long and slow commute. Hours and hours of traffic at a snail's pace. :grr:

[Alleycat]

13. On our way to Inner Harbor, Baltimore MD

About 7 or 8 years ago, we were taking my daughter who was 6 to the Aquarium in Blatimore, MD. We were just getting on 95 to go south about 45 mins south of Philadelphia there was a accident involving a tanker truck that crashed and then caught on fire. The road way was so burnt that traffic was still shut down when we tried to return around 7 that night. By the time we found our way around and got home it was 1:30am A 4 hour trip turned into a 6 1/2 hour return trip.

[China_cat]

14. Trying to get to the airport

to catch the last plane out before a hurricane was due to hit. The airport is about a 10 minute drive from the house during a normal rush hour. It took us 3 hours to get there.

[AngryAmish]

15. On the express lanes outbound on Kennedy Expressway

Friday afternoon, 90 degress, my car is overheating so I have the heat on and I have to get home because I thought my mother was dying (she was, but just not that day). I didn't know the side street like I do now but it took me 2 hours to get home.

[eyesroll]

16. There was, unbeknownst to us, a fatal accident (with a hazmat spill)

two exits up on the Indiana Toll Road. The entire roadway was shut down.

Now, exits on this road can be 10, 20+ miles apart. So we were stuck on the road for several hours, going maybe 3-5 mph, before we could exit before the accident.

The detour wasn't much better.

[Magrittes Pipe]

56. That fucking sucked.

[eyesroll]

57. Dan D. told me he remembered that accident

(and that I shoulda called when we were going through South Bend, he woulda taken care of us).

[miss_american_pie]

17. One of the times a tractor-trailer got stuck

in the Squirrel Hill tunnel. On second thought, maybe it was the Fort Pitt tunnel. I've blocked most of it from memory.

[kedrys]

18. Not my story, but

any number of folks who tried to get out of Houston in advance of Hurricane Rita, and got stuck on freeways for hours and hours until they ran out of gas. Even though we lucked out because the storm skimmed us to the east, we stayed home, and fared much better than the people who tried to evacuate.

[long_green]

30. I've heard Houston was much worse than anything we have

had here in South Louisiana. Imagine if Rita had hit Houston, even with the necessary weakening. My God, what a mess.

[Burma Jones]

19. over four hours to cross the Tappan Zee Bridge

Westbound. August 1992. We were driving back to DC from a two week camping/hotels/whatever we could find to do vacation that stretched from Acadia nat'l park in Maine to the Gaspe Pennsula, Quebec City and Montreal. The jam was on a Saturday Night about midnight. There was construction and an accident. We just turned off our cars, got out and hung out with the other travelers......Finally, when traffic started moving, we crawled across the Hudson to get into beautiful Rockland County NY.

[Gormy Cuss]

20. July 1994, Highgate , VT

Ninety thousand deadheads trying to leave a venue on country roads --it was not a pretty sight. It took four and a half hours to get to a friend's farm less than 20 miles away.

[yellowdogintexas]

21. a flatbed full of 4x6 lumber and I do mean full jackknifed at

the Loop 820/121 split in Fort Worth and tied up the freeways in both directions for hours. Lumber was everywhere, and every escape route was also full. It took me 3 hours to get home when it normally took about 40 minutes.


Same location, different accident: idiots jumped the median, slammed into oncoming traffic and spread mayhem all over bothe sides of the freeway. That one killed some people too. Traffic was horrible in all directions, another 3 hours commute. I ultimately quit that job because of the bad traffic problems and the stress of the commute added to the stress of the job was building up



Then there was the time a load of steel jacknifed on southbound I65 just north of Munfordville, KY. We sat in the HOT sun on one of the busiest highways in the US (between Louisville and Nashville) for hours until enought of that stuff was moved to allow one lane of cars to pass..it was just before a bridge so there was no shoulder!

[Call Me Wesley]

22. 3 hours in traffic jam which was 30 miles long.

The only good thing about it was that I was in the car at the front of the traffic jam. :rofl: Sorry!

[Radio_Lady]

23. Stuck on the Golden Gate Bridge in a shuttle bus going to the airport --

Airconditioning was not working on a 100 degree plus day, and the windows did not open. The driver only opened the door so he could get a breath of hot air. He wouldn't let us off the bus, either. I was nauseated from the fumes and got seasick from the motion of the idling bus. I stripped to my colored underwear and told the men they could cover their eyes if necessary; I could have cared less. I poured ice water over my head, so my hair, bra and panties were soaking wet. I lay down on the seat and tried to think of Christmas icicles and Alaskan glaciers.

We must have been there for more than an hour, but I did manage to catch my plane.

On the positive side, I did get a beautiful view of San Francisco Bay brimming with all kinds of boats on a gorgeous weekend in August 1998!

In peace,

Radio_Lady

[InvisibleTouch]

24. 6 hours on I-65 on the way to Chicago. n/t

[sarge43]

26. I've been in some beauts

Chicago, LA, NYC, Houston, London, but have to say the worst was noon in the center of Rome Italy. It took about two hours to extract from that circus. Those people are nuckin' futs.

[jmm]

27. 4 1/2 hr bus ride from Lynn to Boston

For those of you not familiar with the area it's only about 10 miles from Boston. At one point the bus driver turned off the engine and asked any of us if we wanted to go into a nearby store since it looked like we were going to be there for awhile.

A little boy had been missing for a week in the area and the local cops, in an attempt for good PR, decided to stop every vehicle going down a main road in the city and ask if anyone had seen him. I agree with the sentiment but not the way they went about it. If you're going to do something like that get half the police force out. Don't have only a handful of cops stopping traffic for hours. I've been pulled over in Lynn by more cops than they had out that day.



My parents love to tell me of how one weekend they were going to the Cape with an aunt and her husband. The traffic was so bad they decided to pull over and set up their grill in the break-down lane.

[GRLMGC]

28. Probably in LA on the way to my uncle's wedding

My mom and I drove from Northridge to Long Beach which generally wouldn't take more than an hour and a half with a reasonable amount of traffic. Thing is, we left at around 2:30-3 when there shouldn't have been a ridiculous amount of traffic. Wrong! 3 painful hours. 3! It was horrible.

[bertha katzenengel]

29. Leaving Washington, DC, on September 11, 2001.

Waited in the office until about 2 PM... until the gridlock we could see from the windows had cleared. And THEN it took four hours to travel 35 miles home to Southern Maryland.

[LibertyLover]

59. I did roughly the same thing

waited in the office until 2:30 or so and then hopped the metro to New Carrollton where my car was. Headed out Rt. 50 to Annapolis - only for me there was no, and I mean no, traffic. I got home in 20 minutes from the metro station. Usually it takes 45.

[TheCentepedeShoes]

32. On that long bridge over the swamp on I-10

between Baton Rouge and Lafayette, caused by a wreck on the Lafayette end. Although there were a couple of rest stops along the way, there was no road to get off on and go around. Mr 'pede was in his car a few cars in front of me (we were moving from FL to TX) and we kept our sanity by talking on the little walkie-talkie thingys we took along to keep in contact. It was my turn with the doggie and he wouldn't stop barking at the golden lab in the car next to me.

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

33. 4 hours stuck in the parking lot of the Ledgewood Mall in NJ

To this day, I have no clue why or how, and to make it worse, they didn't have what I wanted.

5 hours trying to get back into the United States from Canada. Apparently, every college-aged/20s member of NJ/NY went to Montreal for "Operation New Year's Drunk America." At least then I was in a car with 3 friends and one giant asshole. I had entertainment and I managed to get some beers from random people around us. It turned into a giant party.

[VADem11]

34. 6 hrs

Trapped on 495 (Capital Beltway) from the mixing bowl to my home near the maryland border. I left at 4 and then it was pure gridlock. No one moved. People started to get out of their cars just to talk and I sat there listening to the only good CD I had in my car. The traffic started moving about 3 hours in and it took the rest of the way to get home. A close second is when I was trapped on Leesburg Pike which is a major thoroughfare near my house. It took 3 hours to get home.

[Initech]

35. I live in LA. Getting stuck in traffic for 2 hours is nothing.

I would say the single worst traffic I've ever been in would be one of the following:

- I had to drive from Long Beach to Santa Monica for work and I probably spent at least a total of 3, maybe 3 and a half hours on the 405 northbound.

- One time I was driving to downtown Los Angeles and there was an injury accident on the 60 freeway at the 605 and I probably waited in that for at least 2 1/2 hours.

[Kerrytravelers]

36. Pasadena to El Cajon (San Diego area) the Sunday after 9-11. 6 HOURS!

Yep. It was the first San Diego date with Mr. kt after we first met. I got out of the car after 6 hours and said "This better be one damn good weekend."

He knew he loved me right then! :hug:


The drive included passing by a nuclear site, a boarder station and a military base. They had the freeway closed and were checking id's through each of the three previously mentioned places. Whew! I was exhausted by the time I got there!

[joneschick]

37. we went to Expo '67 and got stuck in a godawful Quebec gridlock

we were at a virtual standstill for almost 4 hours. I was 10 at the time and my parents let us out of the car to blow off energy but I couldn't run around because I had slipped between the platform and the monorail at Expo and I was black&blue from the tips of my toes to my skinny little 10 year old hip on my right leg. I only kind of remember...my leg went down as a crush of people boarded and someone behind me just grabbed me under the arms and almost tossed me on board the monorail.

[freethought]

38. Been some time but here are three, All in Boston.

All were on I-93 through Boston, MA. All were happening when I was on the clock for my employer.
The first was when I was on I-93 south of Boston, probably down around Braintree or Weymouth.
A truck carrying a load of live lobsters overturns right on 93 in Boston's central artery area. The lobsters get spilled all over the road. Due to the fact that it was a food item that spilled and not some hazardous chemical, the FDA has to be brought in to either supervise or give the go-ahead for the clean up. This took hours. It was hight of summer if I recall. If not for a radio in the vehicle I was in I would have gone insane.

The second was when a tanker truck carrying gasoline overturns, spills its entire cargo, and ignites. A stretch of I-93 roughly around the JFK Library turns into an inferno. Because I-93 is so crucial to Boston's commerce, they can't just shut it down for a while and wait to fix the road. Road repair begins as soon as they get the fire out and does not stop until it is totally finished. I was coming down I-93 on the South bound side. I spent hours in stop and go traffic and more time going through the detours they had set up. I was not in a good mood when I finally get back to my base of operations in Providence, RI.

The last was when a truck was on the lower deck of I-93 and it loses control of the flat bed trailer hauling lumber and hits a key part of the Upper and lower deck's support structure. For those of you who may not be familiar with Boston, I-93 cuts right through downtown Boston and just a little North of downtown the road became elevated in the form of two elevated decks. The Northbound side was the upper deck and the southbound side was the lower deck. This has all since been removed with the "Big Dig" finishing up.
This collision actually compromised the deck's structural integrity. The whole incident brought Boston to its knees. Bumper to bumper for miles, North and South. If I remember correctly the truck driver was Canadian and had positive test for alcohol. Needless to say they "threw the book" him. They could have just thrown him to a bunch of pissed off Boston commuters. They would have torn him to pieces.

[Dem2theMax]

40. There is no such thing as the 'worst traffic jam' in Southern California.

It's that way here 24/7. :evilgrin:

[Initech]

43. Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamn straight!

[CatholicEdHead]

41. Charter bus trip in LA

we left USC after an event and tried to go across town for dinner. We were just crawling along for ever and ever. LA traffic is still worse than the Twin Cities traffic any day of the week.

[BikeWriter]

44. Hurricane Katrina, hands down. I damned near died of heat stroke...

in the middle of Interstate 146 in Liberty, Texas.

[WindRavenX]

45. 2005 NYC MTA strike

Did I mention I had a flight in Newark to catch? x(

It took me 7 hours to get from Queens to NJ. Jesus christ x(

[neweurope]

47. I remember people bringing out picnic tables in the Elbe tunnel

in Hamburg, sitting down and playing cards because nothing moved for hours.

We were on our way from Denmark back to Southern Germany, and from Hamburg on till about 60 km before our hometown hardly anything moved. Must have taken us about 20 hours for those 500 km. Gas stations were out of gas - never thought anything like this could happen in Germany -, people went into the stations, grabbed food and left again; the cashiers had gone home and so evidently had the police.

But it was fun :) Everybody was in a good mood which made it bearable.


--------------

Remember Fallujah

Bush to The Hague!

[KitchenWitch]

48. August 2003

We were driving up I-5 from San Diego heading to Laguna Hills. It took us over 4 hours to go 64 miles.

[Jean Louise Finch]

49. Dudes, I live in Bangkok

It's always a traffic jam.

My first trip here, I got stuck on the on ramp to the highway for literally 3.5 hours, because the king was going by, it was a holiday, and they just shut the whole thing down. This is an alarmingly regular occurrence, though it's not usually that extreme (and it's usually the Prince, not the King). By the time we got where we were going I think it was about five hours later. It was probably a total of 3km. Ridankulous, friends, ridankulous.

[Bassic]

50. I live in Gatineau (Hull) and work in Ottawa and I have to ask...

How in Hell did you manage to get gridlocked for 3 and a half hours?

I mean traffic can be bad, especially if you're going east towards Gatineau and Buckingham, but even then it's never taken more than like an hour to get all the way to the eastern limits (which is usually a 30 minute drive anyway).

BTW: On Mondays and Tuesdays, malls close at 6 pm in Gatineau, and I think all of Québec as well, it's the law. They close at 5 on Saturdays and Sundays.

As for your other question: we do have some wierd ass shit to take care of, but we can't tell you guys about it as you would freak out. :evilgrin:

[AllieB]

51. Almost everyday in the Greater Boston area qualifies

which is why I take the commuter rail. I live 18 miles outside Boston, but some days the traffic is so bad that the commute can take 2-2.5 hours one way on route 93. Route 128/95 can be awful too.

There was one incident where we actually missed a flight because a tractor trailer flipped over at the entrance to the airport tunnel. My husband and I turned around and drove home after sitting in our car for 3 hours. Of course, so many other people were doing the same thing, it took another 2 hours for us to get home-and we were living in the city at the time-about 4 miles from Logan Airport.

[THUNDER HANDS]

52. was stuck for 4 hours on the Garden State Parkway

one exit from the Atlantic City Expressway where I was getting off. A tour bus heading down there had caught fire and the roads were closed...all lanes. I could see the bus, i could see my exit, but i couldn't do anything. i must have smoked an entire pack just waiting to move.

I don't smoke anymore, btw.

[Radio_Guy]

53. Driving to Orlando

A multicar pileup at 2:00 in the afternoon just north of Gainesville, Fla. In July. It was 95 degrees or more. Both lanes stopped. I turned the car off until we got moving again. It took a little more than 2 hours to go the ten miles from the 441 exit to the next exit (by the mall? or maybe the exit before the mall, I can't remember). Lots of cars overheated on the side of the road because they kept running their air conditioning. Lots of drivers overheated inside the cars because they stopped running their air conditioning.

[Kashka-Kat]

54. my entire trip to NYC - the highlight was being stalled in tunnel

betw New Jersey & Manhattan - under the river- observing ancient 150 yr. brickwork with WATER dripping down from the cracks- what's up with that? Traffic completely stalled for at least a half an hour if not more. Claustrophobia kicking in. Watching the antics and displays of frustration by the New Yorkers. Then an ambulance comes screaming going the OPPOSITE direction in our lane. I don't know how they did it but somehow all the cars squeeze even closer together to let the ambulance through. Not that the ambulance was making much time, they probably wouldve been better off getting the person on the stretcher and sliding him over the roofs of the cars.

This experience was not noteworthy bc of length of time, but for sheer madness.

[Left Is Write]

55. Chicago. Sometime in the 70s.

In the van with my parents, my four siblings, and a dog. Hot summer day. HOURS.

[LibertyLover]

58. the M-25, London, England - October, 2002

My husband and I were in England for a week driving around the countryside. We had stayed the night in Windsor and the next morning were to get up, drive to Gatwick Airport, turn in the car, and fly home the next day. It had been raining on and off all week, with a steady downpour starting the day before, but we hadn't thought too much about it - I mean, it's England. So we got on the M-25 heading south and suddenly came to a stop, stuck in traffic. We turned on the radio to hear the announcers telling people to stay off the M-25, get off if they were on it and to return home or stay home. Part of it, the part just before our exit down to Gatwick as it turned out, was under water from all the rain. It took up 3 hours to go a mile to reach an exit. We got off and got back on going the other way, driving entirely around London. It took hours because most of the traffic was doing the same thing. We finally got to Gatwick after almost 7 hours - a trip that at most should have taken 2. We had planned to go into London, taking the train from Gatwick up to town, but by the time we got to our hotel, it was too late in the afternoon and we were too tired.

Several years later, in June, 2004, my husband was doing a course on how to sail a Viking boat in Roskilde, Denmark. There were several other re-enactors there from the UK. One evening over dinner they all got talking and somehow driving in England came up. My husband told the story about the M-25 ordeal and