Simanaitis Says
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TALES OF THE 5S AND OTHERS
IT IS WITH MIXED PRIDE AND SHAME that I read Fiona Young-Brown’s “The 10 Busiest Highways in the U.S.” in the dailypassport website. Pride, because I contend successfully with these obstacles each day. And shame, in that I am a party to the obstacles.
Let’s Thank Ike. Young-Brown writes, “The Interstate Highway System was created in 1956, and since then, the U.S. has built a vast network of ever-busier roads, carrying commuters, vacationers, and commercial traffic alike.”
“But have you ever stopped to wonder which roads are the busiest?,” Young-Brown writes. “Luckily, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) has compiled a list of the country’s busiest roads, based on a metric the agency calls Annual Average Daily Traffic (AADT). Read on to learn which routes rank in the top 10 busiest highways in America.”
Curiously, the dailypassport list omits Interstate 10 through Houston. Perhaps the 2019 data cited have an update? Here are several personal tidbits as well.
10th. Interstate 90—Chicago. “The” 90, as we would say hereabouts, is the longest of the Interstate Highway System, 3021 miles from Boston to Seattle. I connect emotionally with three stretches of it: Boston to Worcester during undergrad days, Cleveland in my youth and grad school, and Chicago these days with my occasional visits to Daughter Beth, her husband Michael, and grandkids Lily and Carter. Come to think of it, now that Lily is at University of Washington Seattle, I should add a fourth portion of the 90 to my list.
Young-Brown notes, “An estimated 321,700 vehicles use the Windy City’s segment of I-90 each day, making it the 10th-busiest highway in the nation.”
9th, 8th, and 2nd: Las Vegas, Miami, and Atlanta. I’ve been on the 15 to Las Vegas only rarely, the most memorable when initiating and setting a record fuel-cell drive from there to San Diego on a Toyota’s single dose of hydrogen. I was not bothered by the 15’s being 9th busiest with 332,000 Las Vegans and visitors.
Interstate 15 travels from San Diego to the Canadian border. A 124-mile stretch passes near the Las Vegas Strip. Image by Timothy Swope/Alamy Stock Photo via dailypassport.
When I lived on St. Thomas, Miami (No. 8) was a passthrough. I would have driven Interstate 95 with my “imported” Ford Pinto. Young-Brown says, “The terminus of I-95 in Miami is Florida’s—and one of the nation’s—busiest stretches of highway, with 339,500 average daily vehicles.” This makes it only slightly ahead/behind Las Vegas, depending on whether we’re talking pride or shame.
Jump to Atlanta’s stretch of Interstate 75 ranking it No. 2 with 419,516 vehicles on an average day. Gee, I see them only from the air when flying into and out of ATL.
7th, 6th, 5th, 4th, 3rd, and 1st. Scoring six outta ten for the most traffic are Interstate portions of SoCal’s 5 and 405, together with the region’s more-or-less east/west 10, 60, and 210.
The 60 (No. 7) is the only top 10 busiest that’s not an Interstate. Locally, it’s the Pomona Freeway and the Moreno Vally Freeway. Image by Kirby Lee/Alamy Stock Photo via dailypassport.
“Just north of Mission Viejo,” Young-Brown writes, “I-5 becomes the Santa Ana Freeway, linking Orange County to metro L.A. Several popular tourist attractions are also in this area, including Disneyland. When commuter and business traffic is combined with visiting vehicles, it adds up to the most congested road in the entire country, with 504,000 vehicles trying to drive it on any given day.”
On the other hand, there are workarounds for those of us who don’t have to be at a particular place at a precise time (alas, if this time happens to be between 6:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m.). Gee, this sounds more scary than it really is. Daughter Suz lives about an hour up the 405. (This, exhibiting two SoCalisms of travel: describing a trip in time rather than distance and “the” route number.)
Carrots. Other workarounds are sorta carrots at the end of the stick: For example, heading north across the sprawl Wife Dottie and I used to mix it up with mid morning commuters so we’d end up at either Malibu’s Marmalade Cafe or Agoura Deli for a leisurely lunch. This would put us on schedule for a couple of secondhand bookstores (one of them, The Book Loft in Solvang) and dinner and overnight at Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo.
Image from SimanaitisSays.
All, the most excellent of carrots on a stick. ds
© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2024
Simanaitis Says 
A lovely ride on I-10. Downright hypnotic. She speaks at 2:38 in:
Santa Fe 3751 (Los Angeles-San Bernardino) Feat. High Speed Pace!
When at Cal Poly SLO, we used to go to the Colony Kitchen in the Madonna Inn complex for midnight ice cream after Saturday night bowling. Only about 1/2 of us had cars, so we shared. I got shoehorned into the back seat of my roommate’s Firebird occasionally, or another’s Camaro or Mustang (the Firebird and Mustang being 6-cyl stick shift). Luxury was when I scored a ride in Chuck’s ’60 Coupe de Ville (a/c belt disconnected to get the mpg over 10). Madonna Inn was a great target for parties and a place where the parents would shack up when visiting.
As for busy highways, I’m surprised 101 in SF (the Bayshore and the Bay Bridge approach) didn’t make the list. But then, it’s usually a parking lot and when nobody’s moving the traffic volume approaches zero. “Capacity” for most roads is in the 30s-maybe 50 mph (see: Level of Service E).
Funny, the standard scale has LOS F as complete breakdown, but in practice there are finer gradations sometimes used. One consultant I was talking with jokingly defined “G” as so bad that it was “God-awful.”