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Gridlock Hell

by Neil Woodburn on Jun 24th 2006 at 12:06PM

Planning a road trip this summer but want to stay clear of gridlock and traffic jams? Well, the United States Federal Highway Administration recently released a report entitled, An Initial Assessment of Freight Bottlenecks on Highways that should help out.

One of their handy charts ranks The Worst Physical Bottlenecks in the United States according to the annual hours of delay experienced at each of the measured locations.

I can't tell you how overjoyed I was to discover that my home town of Los Angeles claims four of the top ten bottlenecks.

Rank

City

Location

Annual Hours
of Delay (000)

Los Angeles

U.S. 101 (Ventura Freeway) at I-405

27,144

Houston

I-610 at I-10 Interchange (West)

25,181

Chicago

I-90/94 at I-290 Interchange

25,068

Phoenix

I-10 at SR 51/SR 202 Interchange

22,805

Los Angeles

I-405 (San Diego Freeway) at I-10

22,792

Atlanta

I-75 south of the I-85 Interchange

21,045

Washington

I-495 at I-270 Interchange

19,429

Los Angeles

I-10 (Santa Monica Freeway) at I-5

18,606

Los Angeles

I-405 (San Diego Freeway) at I-605

18,606

Atlanta

I-285 at I-85 Interchange

17,072

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

law trainee Jun 25th 2006 8:12PM

I graduated from UCLA and being near the 405/101 and 405/10 bottlenecks I can say from experience it really freaking sucks. I drove 2 miles in an hour for that 405/101 because it can be sooo backed up. There are several reasons why it is molasses. Firstly the bottleneck is at the bottom of a hill; everyone is braking and that is worse because of the huge disparity in driving speeds, secondly it splits into east and west 101; there are only one lane for each way at the bottleneck, thirdly there is a stupid off ramp right next to the lanes that further slows it down.

I'd like to just say for the record, the bottleneck could be totally diminished if the 405 to 101 west went .25mile beyond the 101 and circled back around and left the two lanes that split to east and west were merged for just west bound 101

LA ME Jun 26th 2006 2:56PM

I live just four exits down from where the 101 meets the 405, and travel it every morning to work. Considering I get off the exit DIRECTLY before the 405 [Haskell]. So I can vouche for these studies that it is horrible. The trick is to carry a pistol and wave it frantically as you drive through the emergency lane. It really helps!