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randomnessYou can really engage more directly with a highway when there's no one else on it. So it is with I-84 between the Connecticut-New York border and the I-384 split east of Hartford.
I always knew it was a piece of work as freeways go, but driving on it at 3AM on a Sunday night really allowed me to concentrate on the parts of it which are bad because of design, not traffic. Usually, the thing has enough traffic on it that your attention is diverted from the inherent lousiness of the layout. This time there was hardly any other traffic on the road, so I got to interact with it without distractions.
Twisty curves, ups and downs, left-hand exits and entrances, lanes appearing and disappearing from both sides: really, this bit of I-84 has it all. Not so bad compared to many urban interstates, particularly within big cities like New York and Boston, but pretty impressive for one which can only claim to go through Hartford and Danbury.*
I think it really struck me because of the contrast with the highways I'd been driving on farther south. From North Carolina to New Jersey, as long as you're not actually driving on an urban freeway, you're by and large spared this kind of chaos.
It's actually kind of fun to drive on when no one's on it and you can just marvel at the complexity of the route. You'd never build an interstate like this today; it's really a relic of an earlier time. Many of its exits and entrances were built for a freeway system that was never completed.
I'm told truckers hate I-84, though they're pretty much forced to use it through Connecticut as the alternative is the usually-congested I-95 along the coast. I can see why. I can zip along in my crossover with the curves and hills simply providing a bit of spice. Not so for a fully-laden rig.
When it's full of traffic it just becomes another clogged interstate, where most of your attention is on all the other drivers. But when it's empty you can appreciate its particular challenges.
All this and road work, too!
ETA: *And Waterbury! How could I have forgotten...oh, never mind.
I always knew it was a piece of work as freeways go, but driving on it at 3AM on a Sunday night really allowed me to concentrate on the parts of it which are bad because of design, not traffic. Usually, the thing has enough traffic on it that your attention is diverted from the inherent lousiness of the layout. This time there was hardly any other traffic on the road, so I got to interact with it without distractions.
Twisty curves, ups and downs, left-hand exits and entrances, lanes appearing and disappearing from both sides: really, this bit of I-84 has it all. Not so bad compared to many urban interstates, particularly within big cities like New York and Boston, but pretty impressive for one which can only claim to go through Hartford and Danbury.*
I think it really struck me because of the contrast with the highways I'd been driving on farther south. From North Carolina to New Jersey, as long as you're not actually driving on an urban freeway, you're by and large spared this kind of chaos.
It's actually kind of fun to drive on when no one's on it and you can just marvel at the complexity of the route. You'd never build an interstate like this today; it's really a relic of an earlier time. Many of its exits and entrances were built for a freeway system that was never completed.
I'm told truckers hate I-84, though they're pretty much forced to use it through Connecticut as the alternative is the usually-congested I-95 along the coast. I can see why. I can zip along in my crossover with the curves and hills simply providing a bit of spice. Not so for a fully-laden rig.
When it's full of traffic it just becomes another clogged interstate, where most of your attention is on all the other drivers. But when it's empty you can appreciate its particular challenges.
All this and road work, too!
ETA: *And Waterbury! How could I have forgotten...oh, never mind.
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(no subject)
Date: 2014-07-21 07:16 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-07-21 07:33 pm (UTC)One problem with the Merritt, though: when it clogs, that's it. I've been stuck in a miles-long tailback on an entirely stopped southbound CT 15 in the middle of the night. They tend to like to schedule road-closing construction work after midnight, which is really the only time they can get away with it.
I really would have appreciated Waze if it existed when I still lived in Connecticut.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-07-23 01:31 pm (UTC)About a month ago, we were driving from Boston to Morristown (north-central Jersey), just entering the Merritt/Cross parkways, when our Garmin GPS suddenly rerouted us drastically, to get back on to I-84 west. I then looked at Waze and saw why-- there was an accident backing up traffic. The GPS continued to reroute us further and further west due to additional accidents and traffic to our south (e.g. on the Taconic). Eventually we drove maybe 40 extra miles, all the way to the I-84/I-87 interchange near Newburgh before cutting south, but we ran into no traffic the entire way, so it did indeed save us time compared to any route that would've taken us near NYC.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-07-21 07:25 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-07-21 07:45 pm (UTC)On the other hand, when the biggest towns you have to work around are Asheville and Johnson City, it makes things much easier than if you have to deal with Danbury, Waterbury, and Hartford.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-07-21 11:06 pm (UTC)One of the scariest moments of my driving life was coming through Hartford in freezing rain between the wall and a flatbed loaded with 3 transformers.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-07-22 12:03 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-07-22 01:03 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-07-22 03:01 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-07-23 06:19 am (UTC)