Rush Hour Traffic

Anyone who knows me know that it doesn't take much to get me on a rant about traffic and the horrible drivers I see everyday. I could probably do a blog a day with what I see (but I won't - I'll spare everyone from that).

Down south, in Atlanta and Orlando and Miami... they have the volume, but at least they also have the speed. There's nothing I hate more than sitting in crawling traffic. Here... it's always crawling. And I account that to the fact that very few people know how to merge up here... nor do they recognize that the extra lane is there for a mile because traffic engineers deemed it necessary to help traffic flow at some point in time. It wasn't because they felt like spending a few extra million dollars on asphalt. Seriously... *sigh* I digress on the merging issue... for now...

I saw a few things this morning that blew my mind, though.

I often feel for truckers, especially during rush hour. Most people do not know how to drive with trucks in traffic. but this morning... I saw a trucker who was outright obnoxious!! Let me set this up for you... 116th Street, heading east, just before I-69, at the intersection with Lantern Road (by Target). For those who don't know the area, this gets very backed up. In fact, they extended the two turn lanes from lantern onto 116th. Well, this morning, a truck was in the inner of the two turn lanes (the one you get in if you DON'T plan on getting on southbound I-69 in the AM because of the solid line of cars). I was already on 116th Street in the line of cars. The truck turns, acts like he's going to run me over to get into the turn lane onto I-69, but then continues straight... only to turn the straight lane into a turn lane at the light, just about taking some cars out with him!! Now, I've seen cars do this all the time. But they're smaller and they can't run over the other cars turning (unless, maybe, it's a Hummer). But a truck?? That's brazen!! So I continue along my merry way after this. I guess I've seen worse.

As I do the daily ritual of getting downtown with all the lemmings, it occurs to me that the lane you never want to be in during rush hour in Indianapolis is the far left lane. It's always the slowest, and it's aways the one that's at a backed-up standstill. Why... well, if you must, I'd go back to the merging thing. But more so, people seem to think that they won't HAVE to merge in they're in that lane (with merging ramp traffic). I realized that most of my commute is done in the right lane, right with all the ramp traffic... and I usually cruise right past all these people. There are a few places I jump over to the middle, and sometimes even the left lane... but it's rare. Of course, I live in a City with no HOV lanes, as well. They just don't understand the concept of a fast lane here...

But really blew my mind this week was Tuesday morning. Remember the tanker truck explosion I blogged about earlier? Well, it did mess up the interchange for awhile, but they had everything by open Monday, except for the I-69S ramp to I-465S. BUT, beginning Tuesday at lunch, they started broadcasting that it would be open for Tuesday morning rush hour. Monday night, still proclaiming that. Come Tuesday morning... yep, sure enough, it was the first item on all the traffic reports, both on TV and on the radio. Mind you, that's not my normal route... I got down Binford on a regular basis, which is where the traffic had been diverted for the weekend. So you can imagine my surprise when I get within a mile of the interchange and it's backed up for nearly a mile, people all in the left lane, going on Binford. WTF?? So I dart over to the right lanes and take the interchange ramp onto South I-465. Apparently, the lemmings don't listen to the traffic reports, EVER, because there was only about me and a half dozen other cars on the entire wide-sweeping ramp, going right over Binford for all to see... after their chance to get on. Me? I'd been listening to all the news on this because I wanted to know when normalcy would take hold again. I thought it would happen then. But apparently, very few people were thinking the same way I was. Instead, they block my normal route to work with their idiocracy!

Okay... I'm done. I just really needed to vent. I can only vent to Eric so much before he just thinks I'm crazy.