Generic road rage this time though.
I took the toll-road into the office this morning, everything was going along at a nice and easy clip until this one spot that always seems to bottleneck for some stupid reason.
Before I get into the reason, let me just say that I did take a look over at my normal access road on-ramp as I drove pass, the ramp was open.
I got up early this morning for a call with an east coast customer. Which brings me back to the reason why this one spot always seems to bottleneck. I am not normally on the road before like 8:30. Before 8:30 there are TONs of people on the road between 8:30 and 9 there are less people, not ghost town less, more like a 'wow this road could handle a few more people on it, but not too many more' less.
The extra number of people on the road only makes the bottleneck worse, because between 8:30 and 9:00 the bottleneck still happens, it just doesn't stop all three lanes of traffic. Yeah, all three lanes on the expressway basically go into a stop-go mode or best case scenario is like 10Mph. Either way, it brings on the rage. Because it is an Expressway, if I wanted stop-go traffic I would be on the access road.
So what is this bottleneck?
It is an on-ramp where people are merging into the expressway from the access road. And mind you this isn't your typical old fashion Texas style 'death merge' (I would like to think that I coined the phrase). A 'death merge' is where you are given about 1.5-2 car lengths to get onto the expressway. Obviously that doesn't necessarily give you the appropriate distance to be able to match the coming traffic's speed, so you just have to punch it and hope for the best, because you can't stop or the people coming up behind you will hit you.
Back to the bottleneck.
It is what you would probably consider you everyday standard merge setup. You have plenty of room to accelerate and get up to the speed of the traffic already on the expressway. However, for some reason the folk who drive 183 don't seem to be able to understand the idea of letting people onto the expressway I guess.
Because from what I can tell this is what happens. The car that is looking to merge onto the expressway is consistently denied the right-of-way to merge onto the expressway, this causes them to do one of two things. 1. speed up and cut someone off or 2. hit the breaks and thus backup the on-ramp.
I think they tend to do the first one more. This in turn causes the right-hand lane to do one of two things 1. hit their breaks to avoid hitting the car that just cut them off, because they weren't nice enough to try to let them in to begin with or 2. they speed up and cut someone off in the middle lane.
Does anyone see where I am going with this?
It cascades, just like style sheets. The middle lane in turn does one of the same two things. However, when we get to the left lane, we reach the end of the line, because there is no one left to cut off. So you end up with three lanes of people hitting their breaks and trying to cut other people off.
Oh yeah, did I mention that (IMHO) most people who drive in Texas tailgate the driver in front of them? I was taught that I should keep like two car lengths (or more) in front of the car in front of me, to allow for ample stopping room when driving on the expressway. I think these folks were taught to keep about a 2-liter's distance from the car in front of them, that is the width not the length.
So throw the tailgating into the mix and you end up with a 'spontaneous breaking, cutting off, tailgating, occasional accident leading to gawking' morning cocktail of road rage.
And to top it off, because of the fact that I usually leave two car lengths, I often end up with someone merging into that space.
Well almost time for my next conference call.
Laterz
So they built this toll-road up through Cedar Park and into Leander, 183A.
I take it home. But I don't usually take it on the way into work. That is probably going to change, they are adding another traffic light to the access road I take instead of the toll-road.
However, my rage this morning is because of the fact that they closed the on-ramp that I normally take to get onto the expressway (the toll-road merges into the expressway, this on-ramp is after all of that).
I saw the other day that they had a sign that said 'One lane on-ramp - April 25, 2007'.
OK, that's fine. I can deal with a one lane on-ramp. EXCEPT, it wasn't one lane it was no fscking lanes. They had it all blocked off.
This made the access road crazy, because on top of that they had been forcing people to merge from 3 lanes into two, and this doesn't go well normally, but combine that with the no on-ramp and you get an extra 25 minute stuck in gridlock for no good reason.
Now, they might have had one lane yesterday, I wouldn't know. Because for some reason I felt the need to take the toll-road into work yesterday morning. Not sure why, just felt like it.
I think I will be taking the toll-road into work for the rest of month of May, last free month on the toll-road.
Note, the big sign was still flashing 'One lane on-ramp - April 25, 2007' this morning.
Uggg, so I tried to find a quicker way into work, by taking the other toll-road, 45E which leads into the 1 (Mopac toll-road).
Pretty sure this cost me $0.75, fsck, not doing that again.
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention they were doing construction on 45E today too, forcing people to merge from 3 lanes into two, at least the on-ramp wasn't closed.
So I got a case of ROAD RAGE this morning, and was 35 minutes late because of the detours.
Back to the grind.
Laterz
