It is more dramatic than you may have thought! Wayne Gerdes – CleanMPG – April 3, 2020 Southern California's infamous 405 running between Irvine and San Fernando through the heart of LA is known as the most congested highway in all of America. From wiki, the running joke is that the highway was numbered 405 because traffic moves at "four or five" miles per hour, or because drivers had spent "four or five" hours to travel anywhere. Average speeds as low as 5 mph are routinely recorded during morning and afternoon rush. During a typical rush, it can easily take over 6-hours to cross its 73-mile length from end to end. From personal experience, during a Friday afternoon rush, it is the most brutal, mind numbing nightmare you have ever experienced behind the wheel of an automobile. I snapped the pic while on the 405 just north of Irvine at 05:30 pm on Friday afternoon. If you were driving a Gen-6 NASCAR Cup Series car, you would have been able to run at 200 mph in the left lane for miles of this normal horror show on Friday afternoon, yesterday. In Southern California, citizens are taking Coronavirus deadly serious. Except for idiots like myself...
Traffic around here has increased somewhat in the last week. More people working ? Or just tired of being in the house. Overall , of course, fewer cars than pre-corona.
Watch the many state Department of Transportation cameras around each state to see the steep levels of traffic cessation or check your GPS at notorious stop & go intersections. Yeah, the earthquake scientists are able to track minor earthquakes with much less noise recorded by their instruments.
Superlative driving conditions for a CVT tranny. I loved my CVT in the Dodge Caliber in those slow AND slower conditions. Ultimate easy control at such speeds (& slower) without continual jerky or mild shifting, almost made such speeds enjoyable.
I've been on the road every day this week. Sunday we had car church as we have for the last 3 Sundays. The preacher preaches from the church porch while everyone remains in their cars. Monday I went to my mom's to do some yard work for her. Tuesday the wife and I went for about a 40 mile round trip to the cemetery where my dad's grave is. Wednesday we needed some groceries so we went to the grocery. Today my wife had to work. She works as a custodian in a school. The school is closed with the exception of office personal so the custodians have been taking turns one going in each day to clean/disinfect the office areas.
"...during a Friday afternoon rush, it is the most brutal, mind numbing nightmare you have ever experienced behind the wheel of an automobile..." You're doing it wrong. Use a motorcycle and lane split. CA is one of the only places in the US sensible enough to allow lane splitting and filtering.
I've been experiencing a lot less traffic in the DC area. For example, normally it takes over an hour to drive from a client's building in Rockville to my office in Sterling. Lately its been about 35 minutes. Here's a link to a video I did from Rockville to Sterling.
/ "Mother of all ironies" .... People in Wuhan, China, celebrate traffic jams as the former coronavirus epicenter lifts its lockdown after 76 days "I won't complain about congested traffic again, because it's a sign the streets are flourishing," https://www.businessinsider.com/wuh...ffic-jams-a-seeming-return-to-normalcy-2020-4 Can Air Pollution Cause Asthma in Kids? How About Autism? We all know air pollution is not great for your health, but two new studies this week stressed just how bad it can be for children, infants and the developing fetus. Exposure to air pollution at a young age, these studies showed, can lead to an array of long-lasting health problems, including asthma and autism. It's not just that polluted air can, say, trigger asthma attacks. Now, researchers are finding that exposure to air pollution may actually cause some diseases. https://www.kqed.org/stateofhealth/13334/can-air-pollution-cause-asthma-in-kids-how-about-autism Wuhan -- pop. 11 million. ... about the size of NYC and Paris .. ...combined. China Is Turning Beijing Into a Megacity Six Times The Size of NYC "It would be spread over 82,000 square miles, about the size of Kansas, and hold a population larger than a third of the United States. And unlike metro areas that have grown up organically, Jing-Jin-Ji would be a very deliberate creation." https://gizmodo.com/like-100-million-people-in-the-size-of-kansas-that-has-1719086609 /A planned city of 130 million --- put another way.... "Hey China, stupid much?"
Yes, Prof. Mark Z. Jacobson has been blowing the lid off inner-city air pollution for 20(+?) years, delineating the excess deaths to both children & long-duration effects on adults. Dr. Jacobson has entire teams of researchers dealing with many avenues related to health & how countries should develope.
Same here. But, I have to stop at stoplights as often as before ccp coronavirus. But, the stack ups behind the stoplights are not as long & time stopped at stoplights is less..... at least, the few times I've gotten out on the roads. Intersections prone to gridlock have had no gridlock. We'll see when gridlock re-occurs.
The 130 million are already living and working in the area. From the sourced NY Times article, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/20/world/asia/in-china-a-supercity-rises-around-beijing.html, it sounds like Jing-Jin-Ji is suppose to address issues that have arisen from unplanned urban sprawl. For years, it was difficult to get residential permits to live in Beijing, so the Chinese equivalent of the housing developments have been popping up around the city, filled with the people that work in it. In addition to infrastructure issues in transportation, these residential areas are also lacking in things like hospitals. The basic plan is to improve the roads, some major highways aren't connected to each other, and rail, and move some businesses and government offices around so the daily cycle flow of people isn't all one way.
Altho our Washington state still has "stay in place" orders & closures of non-essential businesses & activities, I took a drive. I would say there is considerably greater traffic (specially with sedans) & walking, running & bicycle activity, compared to one & two weeks ago. I noted a great increase of such actions, at some of the parking sites along & on the Centennial Trail that spans much of our county, north to south. Tho groups of people looked to be family-related, people & groups were passing each other on the wide blacktop Trail.
Washington state highway & outdoor park traffic is rising quickly. Hopefully, we won’t see as great a leap in new ccp coronavirus cases as appears to be such, in states that were the very first to open business & outdoor activities. For the busiest regions, I am not as hopeful. My wife & I went to a wildlife recreation area (WRA) yesterday, to beat the incoming rain system that is raining here now on Memorial Day. The WRA had more people (still few) on the weekend than I would have expected later during the week.
From April 13, 2020: With Washington state lockdowns coming to an end, the Sunday traffic is bad again. Passing through one traffic light intersection prone to gridlock, I haven’t seen it occur.... yet. But, if I hung around that intersection on the sidewalk, I bet I’d see it. Needless to say, I ain’t “hangin’ with the crew” BSing at that intersection.
It’s mostly back to normal now, but buggaboos like Houston and Atlanta were effectively cleared out. And I had prime truck parking far deeper into the evening than normal. It was basically a ~20% bonus on my check to be able to truck so efficiently, and I went from 8ish mpg to 8.5ish mpg.
Well, since part of my bonus is based on fuel economy, I’m pretty happy that’s the highest monthly mpg I have gotten in the 5 years I have been doing this.
Going from 8MPG to 8.5MPG is like going from 40MPG to 42.5MPG, but you collect your bonus every 8 miles of travel, not 40 miles of travel.... oh, them, too....
