Dariusb Posted September 10, 2014 Share Posted September 10, 2014 (edited) We all know how bad/unpredictable traffic in this city can be. What was your craziest traffic jam/traffic related experience? What was the weirdest time of day you were stuck in traffic? Pics/vids welcome as well. Edited September 10, 2014 by Dariusb Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
august948 Posted September 10, 2014 Share Posted September 10, 2014 Rita. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dariusb Posted September 10, 2014 Author Share Posted September 10, 2014 Ok. Yeah that was very chaotic. How about your craziest commute or a simple trip that became an ordeal. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
august948 Posted September 10, 2014 Share Posted September 10, 2014 There have been too many of a similar vein to recount any one. Usually it has to do with a freeway shutdown due to an accident. When that happens, sometimes impatience gets the better of me and I end up going the long way around on another freeway or try to make it through on surface streets. Later on I usually figure out that I could have just sat in traffic and been better off.  On those few occasions when I really act sensibly, I pull over to a watering hole and wait it out. Seriously, though, Rita is the one that really sticks out in my mind. And we were lucky. It only took us 6 hours to get to Austin. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BaderJF Posted September 10, 2014 Share Posted September 10, 2014 This year I think or last year, I got stuck on the elevated part of 59 south for 3 hours do to an 18 wheeler that flipped over Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slick Vik Posted September 10, 2014 Share Posted September 10, 2014 Once when I was a kid had to shut off the car on 10, traffic stopped due to an accident Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IronTiger Posted September 10, 2014 Share Posted September 10, 2014 Rita was absolutely nuts everywhere, you weren't able to find peanut butter, bread, or bottled water in almost any store in College Station-Bryan for a while. When I worked at Village Foods (formerly AppleTree, which rebranded in late 2008), one of the managers told me how they had to bring out an entire huge palette of ice (4x4x6, if I recall correctly) that sold out before the ice melted. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Purpledevil Posted September 10, 2014 Share Posted September 10, 2014 Yeah, Rita sucked. We stayed put and watched the people walking up 45 and abandoning their out of gas cars. Biggest nightmare I've ever seen in all my years here. Worst part is that many of those trying to beat it out of Houston actually ran right into it by going to Lufkin, Nacodoches, Tyler, and so on. I think the worst we got up here was a couple of 50 mile an hour wind gusts. You'd have never even known a storm had hit up at our place in Bellville, except for the lack of available gas. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IronTiger Posted September 10, 2014 Share Posted September 10, 2014 Probably the worst I've seen was 610 Loop West when President George Bush came to town in August 2003. Problem is with evacuations, if you think there might be a problem, do it ASAP before everyone else does, because there will be more trouble on the roads than the highway. It also shows you that super-wide freeways do have a purpose. If you open up the shoulders and leave maybe 2 lanes for inbound traffic, you'll get almost 30 lanes heading out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BigFootsSocks Posted September 10, 2014 Share Posted September 10, 2014 Not counting hurricanes there was a massive oil pipe being towed on 290 that fell off and blocked the whole freeway right at the exit of Soring Cypress. This thing was bigger and longer than those wind turbines you see coming thru off the ship channel. Was stuck there for about 4 hours. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trae Posted September 10, 2014 Share Posted September 10, 2014 There was an accident that completely shut down 59 near Lakewood. I was able to put my car in park, go to my trunk to get the ganja, roll it up, put it back, and smoke some before we were able to move. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LarryDierker Posted September 10, 2014 Share Posted September 10, 2014 Sometimes when stuck in traffic caused by an accident, I wish the tow trucks would just pull the cars off the freeway immediately and let the medics and police deal with the victims there. Is the well being of 2 or 3 people really more important than thousands not reaching their destinations on time. Thats countless hours of productivity and profit loss.Thats people losing jobs for not showing up on time.etc. etc. The greater good! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mkultra25 Posted September 10, 2014 Share Posted September 10, 2014 Yeah, Rita sucked. We stayed put and watched the people walking up 45 and abandoning their out of gas cars. Biggest nightmare I've ever seen in all my years here. Worst part is that many of those trying to beat it out of Houston actually ran right into it by going to Lufkin, Nacodoches, Tyler, and so on. That would be me. I headed up to my aunt's house in Lufkin as Rita was approaching. It took me around 15 hours to get there via 59 North (and a backroad detour into Coldspring to refuel at 2 AM, after a tanker truck refilled the tanks at the Brookshire Bros. gas station). Spent one pleasant day after arriving, then the storm plowed through Lufkin and knocked out the power for the next several days.  Didn't leave town for Ike, but did relocate to my wife's place of business (an assisted living facility for seniors), where the building suffered significant damage and was without power for a while.  In neither case did our house lose power or have much more than a few tree branches down. Next time, I'm staying put. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JLWM8609 Posted September 10, 2014 Share Posted September 10, 2014 (edited) Sometimes when stuck in traffic caused by an accident, I wish the tow trucks would just pull the cars off the freeway immediately and let the medics and police deal with the victims there. Is the well being of 2 or 3 people really more important than thousands not reaching their destinations on time. Thats countless hours of productivity and profit loss.Thats people losing jobs for not showing up on time.etc. etc. The greater good! It's not that simple to clear some accidents. There's cleanup (especially if fuel has leaked), sometimes the victims can't be moved until they're properly stabilized because moving them may cause death or further injury, or there can be be damage to the roadway that needs to be addressed before the highway reopens, like in the case of the 18-wheeler that flew off the ramp from 59 north to 610 west this morning and fell onto the mainlanes below and caused some damage to the center barrier. Edited September 10, 2014 by JLWM8609 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slick Vik Posted September 10, 2014 Share Posted September 10, 2014 I was in Austin during Rita. For Ike I took a flight to California and didn't come back for a week Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mollusk Posted September 11, 2014 Share Posted September 11, 2014 (edited) Not me personally, but a good friend really got tooled around by the DPS trying to evacuate Seabrook to go to the inlaws in Sugar Land for Ike.  Gulf Coast native, so this wasn't exactly his first rodeo.  Naturally, he just went pretty much straight west, bearing south here and there - which worked dandy until he got to 288, where they wouldn't let him continue going west and instead insisted that he head north on it and 6.  There was nobody on 1462, so it would have taken another 15 - 20 minutes to get there - no, he had to join the herd for several hours.  We never have been able to make sense of that. For Rita, neighbors across the street turned around after taking five hours to get to Beaumont on their way to Baton Rouge.  They were glad they did - they ended up putting up the 'rents for a few days rather than vice versa. Personally, I figure that they don't call this part of town the Heights for nothin' and my house hasn't blown away during the last 90 years (give or take), so I just remain serenely in place until afterwards.  Edited September 11, 2014 by mollusk Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Purpledevil Posted September 11, 2014 Share Posted September 11, 2014 That would be me. I headed up to my aunt's house in Lufkin as Rita was approaching. It took me around 15 hours to get there via 59 North (and a backroad detour into Coldspring to refuel at 2 AM, after a tanker truck refilled the tanks at the Brookshire Bros. gas station). Spent one pleasant day after arriving, then the storm plowed through Lufkin and knocked out the power for the next several days. Didn't leave town for Ike, but did relocate to my wife's place of business (an assisted living facility for seniors), where the building suffered significant damage and was without power for a while. In neither case did our house lose power or have much more than a few tree branches down. Next time, I'm staying put.Exactly why I don't evacuate, mkultra. I live north of the Belt anyway. I've got it in my mind that if I could survive Hurricane Alicia in tact, I can survive anything that a hurricane can throw at me. The only way I will ever leave is if we are staring down the barrel of a Cat 5. Then, there's really no choice; it would then be a matter of survival.In that case, I'm only going as far as Bellville, where we have a house on 19 acres. Anything that comes across Austin County should have had enough of the wallop taken out of it by Galveston and Houston being in between. One can only hope. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SkylineView Posted September 12, 2014 Share Posted September 12, 2014 How about the day they shut down 59 SB around 2pm because the truck was hanging off the ramp... Took me almost two hours to get from Greenway Plaza to Uptown... 3 miles down Wesleyan to San Felipe. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.