I-57 in Illinois didn’t actually have a lane closure until around Champaign or Rantoul (there was “construction” further south but no lane closure). There were spaces in between where you could get up to speed so it wasn’t solid all the way down but the blockages were slow and deep.
I finally got off of I-57 around Paxton and took Rt 115 north for about 40 miles until I could get onto I-55 north. Which was untraveled and open, so thank Google Maps for that. Waze had me staying on I-57 but then I think it couldn’t connect to its server between the lack of decent cell access and number of people trying to use the app.
I stayed in St Louis over the weekend, and drove out on Monday to Meramec Caverns to watch the event. I-44 had no traffic heading out (around 7am) and we only saw a little coming back (3pm) once we got near the city.
Interestingly, I drove across central Idaho yesterday, from Butte, Montana, to Boise. Part of my trip was heading south on US 93 from the border, and up the Salmon River. There were very few people headed South, but the traffic North along that road was substantial. Pretty clearly, a lot of folks stayed over Monday night, and headed out from the totality zone on Tuesday, which was a good idea.
Thanks for posting this! We live just outside NYC and had to be in Williamsburg VA on Friday afternoon and had thought that since we were that far south we might as well get to Myrtle Beach & Georgetown SC for Monday. We gave up on the idea somewhat to my regret since we would have had to be home by Tuesday and the drive back looked too daunting.
Once you got past Paxton, it was fine on 57. But especially the seven miles before that it was complete hell. I only realized the severity of the traffic maybe a quarter mile after I passed the last exit before Paxton. Grrrr. I was tempted to just pull a U in the grassy median, but I didn’t want to risk it in a Ford Focus. If I had an SUV, I probably would.
Yeah, pretty much nothing in Albany, either, except for the few minutes just before and after the eclipse. The central valley definitely seemed to be a less popular destination than either the coast or the inland desert.
We stayed with friends in Oregon, but I wanted to be back home so I could go to work Tuesday. Of course I5 was a disaster. But when we hit Centralia, suddenly everything cleared up.
Of course the main problem that causes traffic jams is traffic. If people can move at 60 mph, then they zoom along to their destination and get off the road. But when it gets too crowded they slow down a little, then a little more, and suddenly you’re in stop and go traffic. And when that happens, the process is autocatalytic. The traffic jam itself is what causes the traffic jam.
We came up 395 and could see that the bridge and every road leading onto I-82 was jammed so we cut west on 730 to I-84 to cross the river on 97 to take that back up to Yakima and then to Seattle. It was a little out of our way but by that time we were looking for a spot to spend the night anyway and everything was pretty clear by Tuesday morning.
We also came up US-395. Once we got back to cellular service, Google Maps was telling us to avoid I-82 (the way we came down) and the Umatilla Bridge and instead take these little residential arterials from Stanfield north to 730 and then through Wallula. We left Fox around Noon and were back in Spokane before sundown.
Thanks, Google!
My question is, where does Google get its information? Do local transportation departments upload it? Does Google “read” Twitter?
If you let it. It asks you when you install it to give it permission to use your location information. Options are, IIRC, “Always”, “When using the app”, and “Never” (which would defeat the purpose of using Google maps.) I typically set permissions to “when using the app” for apps that ask me about location information. One major exception is a mileage logging program I use to passively track my driving miles, which I categorize later for tax purposes. That is set to always track me.
This actually came up in conversation with my wife this weekend. I had always just assumed that’s how at least partly Google got their traffic information, but I wasn’t 100% sure. It just made sense to me. I knew Waze did, because it’s whole schtick is crowd-sourced traffic and road information, but Google (and other traffic maps) were just an assumption on my part.
“Never” would still allow you to get directions from Point A to Point B. You’d have to enter both points manually, instead of one of them being “here”, and you’d have to read off the directions as they came rather than having the phone tell you, but it wouldn’t be completely useless. After all, Google Maps can be used on a computer, too.
Answers the question I had about it too. Cite? That would also explain why, while we were backroading it via county roads, it would show red in the middle of no place. When we got there, there’d be a stop sign with nobody there. Must have been 2-3 cars stopped there a bit before.
