Freeways, a faster way to get from ‘Point A’ to ‘Point B.’ Faster unless you live in Seattle. Seattle has the seventh worst traffic congestion of the major metropolitan areas in the nation. So here in my town, freeways should be re-named gridlockways. Recently, the WSDOT installed these electronic speed limit signs on Interstate 5 and Interstate 90 in the metro area. The traffic can now be controlled by lane with a specific speed limit for each. Here all lanes are set to 30 mph, t.h.i.r.t.y on the freeway, it’s annoying. You want to get somewhere so you get on the freeway and then you grind to a crawl or a halt and what should be a 20 minute drive takes you an hour or hour and a half. Sometimes you have to get a long way out of town before the cars thin out and you can ‘fly’ along at 60. Often I just stay on the surface streets and stay off the freeways altogether and a perk of that is I can stop and take photos along the way. What about you, what’s traffic like where you live?
Thanks for joining me today, for the view that is right here! ~ Madge
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Here in the Big Apple mostly people take public transportation because in addition to heavy city traffic consisting of delivery trucks, mail trucks, taxis, limos, there’s limited free parking in midtown/downtown and garages are extremely pricey. People commuting from NJ or CT drive or take trains/buses .. those who drive I suspect must pay a hefty price for parking … me? I walk most of the time, its a very walkable city tho in the morning on the way to the office and at night on the way home I take the subway … its fast
ha, well here in my little area of virginia traffic isn’t terrible, even during rush hour and we only have 2 lane freeways :D now that all changes of course as you get to the bigger cities, but still it isn’t as bad as other places i’ve lived!
me again,lol…just adding that i take back roads over the freeway any day though…they are so scenic around here!
and the FREEWAY is not free of traffic and certainly not free to build or maintain and with these signs whoo boy on the mess this would create. i try to stay off all our roads and interstates here when possible. when i worked, it took me 35 minutes to drive 17 miles to work and 45 plus to drive 17 home. and that was 6 years ago, now it would be an hour for that 17 miles
On the road by our farm there might be one vehicle per hour.
When I moved to my little town 40 years ago we had 3 traffic lights in the whole town. Now we have 8 or 9. Traffic, to say the least, isn’t a problem!
oh my gosh! our SCHOOL zones are 30 mph here! (actually, the elementary school is 35 mph!) :)
Oh yes- I certainly don’t miss living or traveling in the city. That is brutal.
Ugh! This reminds me of traffic in the north San Francisco Bay Area, where I think they invented the term “gridlock.” 30 mph at times would seem screaming fast. I drove away from those “freeways” and haven’t looked back. The same Highway 101 that was 6 congested lanes where I used to live is now 2 lanes in most places – a problem when someone does something stupid – but a much more appealing scale.
Traffic is NO fun! 30 mph is crazy!
Hi Madge! That freeway sounds extremely frustrating. But the electronic speed limit signs are cool….they just need to read more than 30! I love the look of your blog….
I guess I can’t complain.
Except for the occasional tractor or grain truck, it’s faily non-existent. Lol.
I live around Houston, and our traffic can be quite horrendous! But I think Seattle has us beat by a long shot. I don’t envy you. Taking surface streets here isn’t always a good solution though. In many places the surface streets are just as bad or worse than the freeways.