19-mile backup on I-15 as holiday traffic hits California-Nevada border

[hal]

https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/1...656830.php

This caught my eye because I once saw this traffic jam. It was around 20 years ago and I was driving from Sacramento to Sedona to stay at a friend's place for a week. Luckily I wasn't going to either LV or LA and was only on I-15 for a short distance while going through Barstow on my way to I-40 from hwy 58.

This was the Sunday after TG traffic jam and I was going in the opposite direction - about 9-10PM when I got to Barstow. I drove past stopped cars on the other side of the highway for what seemed like 20 minutes. It was the LONGEST line of stopped (or barely moving) cars I had seen in my whole life before or since. While planning this trip, it never occurred to me that the TG traffic would be an issue - I got lucky that I just happened to be going in the direction that was moving.

[GGD]

In the mid 1980's to mid 1990's I used to drive from the SF Bay area to the Los Angeles area on the Wed evening before Thanksgiving. The traffic on I-5 was backed up for hundreds of miles, all the way to where 101 exits onto 152 East in Gilroy.

Coming back home was always better because the traffic was distributed over several days.

[freeradical]

Freeways are free. :devil:

[Will Collier]

Before I got married I used to drive from Atlanta to spend Thanksgiving with my folks in southeast Alabama. The first year I did that I drove back on Sunday around mid-day... and ran into bumper-to-bumper traffic on I-85 at the AL/GA state line. It was white-knuckle driving from there to my house, no faster than 35mph for the next two hours.

Never. Again.

[Pat]

Only reason this is news, it's Thanksgiving weekend.
There's ALWAYS miles long backups heading north on Fridays, south on Sundays. For decades.

[N-OS X-tasy!]

Been there, done that. Never again.

[N-OS X-tasy!]

Pat wrote:
Only reason this is news, it's Thanksgiving weekend.
There's ALWAYS miles long backups heading north on Fridays, south on Sundays. For decades.

Holidays are always worse.

[cbelt3]

Geesh.....

I once experienced a 5 hour traffic halt on the PA turnpike due to a truck vs. truck accident on a bridge over the Allegheny river... they both tried to go into a narrowed bridge and WELDED themselves together.

Fortunately it was summer, so I shut off the car and took a nap.

[RAMd®d]

I was in traffic like that headed to Monterey, twice.

Fortunately for me, it wasn't the holiday and traffic was pretty steady at 30-45mph, if one could call that steady.

I always try to avoid slow traffic and have been mostly successful, but not nearly as often as I'd like.

And it's times like that I really appreciate having an A/T.

But an AT-AT would be preferable.

[N-OS X-tasy!]

RAMd®d wrote:
I was in traffic like that headed to Monterey, twice.

Fortunately for me, it wasn't the holiday and traffic was pretty steady at 30-45mph, if one could call that steady.

I always try to avoid slow traffic and have been mostly successful, but not nearly as often as I'd like.

And it's times like that I really appreciate having an A/T.

But an AT-AT would be preferable.

Anyone who is familiar with the drive to Vegas from SoCal is familiar with the town of Baker on I-15. Anybody familiar with the town of Baker knows it has three freeway exits over a span of one mile - one exit at each end of the mile and one in the middle.

On my worst experience driving back from Vegas, it took me AN HOUR to drive along the freeway from the first Baker exist to the third. An hour to drive one mile - an average speed of one mile per hour.