Yesterday I left work and headed downtown to meet my wife, but the bridge into the city was jam packed. My guess, because of the night’s scheduled ballgame. So I bailed out and Waze told me to head for another bridge. Again, traffic at a standstill, and I bailed out again and decided to give up and head away from the city.
However, every damn road in Northern Virginia going in every damn direction seemed to be jammed up and it took me a total of two-and-a-half hours to get home. U.S. 1 approaching the 14th Street bridge – gridlocked. GW Parkway approaching Memorial Bridge – gridlocked. Wilson Boulevard heading westbound through Arlington (away from the city) – gridlocked. The Shirlington interchange – gridlocked. State Route 7 heading towards Alexandria – gridlocked. Russell Road towards Old Town – gridlocked. Duke Street eastbound from Landmark towards Old Town – gridlocked.
How can I find out what was going on? This was not normal rush-hour traffic. There had been a rainstorm around noon, but would that have knocked out traffic all over the county? I didn’t notice a single non-functional traffic light or accident blocking traffic along the way.
Two and a half hour drive home in NoVa… how did you even know that it was worse than usual?
I swear, DC traffic is the worst traffic in the world. I’m pretty sure there are people who just live in their cars on 95 between DC and Richmond. They started out driving to Richmond 15 or 20 years ago and some have even made it halfway there by now. They tell their children (who were conceived and born somewhere around Quantico) that they hope to gaze upon Ashland before their time on this earth ends.
It occurred to me I never answered your question. Around here we have ‘Rumor Mill’ Facebook groups that frequently have those kinds of things. You might want to see if you have one of those in your area.
The Google Maps app on my phone is pretty good on knowing where the bad traffic is, finding the best route, and knowing how long it will take to get where I’m going. That doesn’t really answer the question of why the traffic is particularly bad, but it tells me what I need to know at the time. I can satisfy my curiosity about the root cause later.
511virginia.org or call 511 on your phone, this may or may not meet your standards. It looks like the give a vague description if known “…due to congestion” “…due to a vehicle accident.”
Back the the 20th Century, we had this thing called a “radio” … most every rig had one … on the “radio” we could “tune-in” an “AM News Station” … get this, they would have a helicopter and they’d fly over the city reporting on traffic conditions … old fashioned stuff for sure … about every ten minutes the guy in the helicopter would cut in the broadcast and say how the traffic was … “flying over the I-895 interchange with Virginia Route 267 and things are slowed down to about 40 mph all directions” …
The nicest pat is that it was lawful to have your “radio” on while you drove … not sure checking Google Maps on your cell phone is allowed in DC … in Oregon, you can’t even touch your cell phone while driving …
Yeah, Google maps all the way. Generally accurate down to the minute, I find.
This year my family’s found ourselves dead center of a roadworks triangle consisting of a half-year level crossing removal a couple of hundred metres north, a year-and-a-half bridge widening half a kilometre south-east, and traffic re-routing on one of the biggest north-south thouroughfares in the city, 2k to the west. We basically don’t go places without checking “what does Google Maps say about the route?” It hasn’t let us down yet.
They get their data straight from the phones of all the people who have Location Services on and are logged into a Google account, so it would be really hard for any competing company to do better
This. The Bay Area has a reasonably good news radio traffic report, though the horrible road I commuted on was a dead spot for them. Godzilla could be there eating cars and they’d spend their time saying the Bay Bridge was moving well.
However their web site might give an answer, and they might even respond to an email.
We also have a traffic columnist in the Murky News who definitely would.
There was some sort of “police activity” in my city a year ago or so. I was curious what was going on so I checked the Twitter feed for the local police department. There was a post there that explained what happened. There were news stories on the websites for the local TV stations and newspapers but not until later in the day or the next day.
So you might check if the local police or the local transit authority have a Twitter feed.
On my iPhone I have INRIX traffic app (dunno about other platforms). It displays a map with most of the main roads, with green / yellow / red lines showing traffic load, and icons for things like accidents, construction, stalled cars, etc.
I mostly use it when I’m on long drives. You can zoom the map to get the scale you like, and it will track your location to keep you updated.
I live in Northern Virginia. I listen to WTOP to get traffic reports. They give a report every 10 minutes. “Traffic and weather on the nines…”. They have a web site and you can listen to them via the web. But I just use a radio.
