So often as car enthusiasts, we pontificate and fantasize about our favorite driving roads. Oh, there’s that squiggly one in Italy, and the glory of the touge in Japan. But I want to ask you something altogether more irritating—what’s your least favorite road?
I’m not asking in the general sense. Yes, we all hate city streets that don’t have car parks where we need them. We all hate that annoying cul de sac where our ex lived where you could never turn around without making a six-point turn. But I want you to be more specific. What road, what singular stretch of sign-posted tarmac earns your undying enmity to this day?
I raise this because for me, the answer is very easy. It’s a long, asphalted turd that wears the imaginitive moniker of South Road. That’s because the South Australian government didn’t think this hateful piece of infrastructure deserved any more attention than that during the naming process. Why is it so bad? Oh, let me tell you.
“Uh, this is it.” Credit: YellowMonkey via CC BY-SA 4.0
You don’t care about the geographic specifics because you’re not from my hometown of Adelaide. So I’ll just tell you why it sucks. It’s because it’s a major highway that technically stretches a full 117 kilometers in length. That might make you think it has a broad, multi-laned layout where you travel at high speeds with a minimum of intersections and traffic lights. Oh, buddy. No, it’s the opposite!
In the southern suburbs of Adelaide, this thing becomes a regular street. It goes down to two lanes in each direction. There are shops, side roads, and houses all over the place, and traffic slows to an absolute crawl. It’s so thick that for a good 12 hours a day, it’s virtually impossible to turn across traffic. Most of the time you can’t even do a U-turn, so you end up pulling into a shopping center’s parking lot and then pulling back out onto the road.
I hate this damn road so much because for a good six months, I had to commute on it a full three days a week. I’d spend a good ten kilometers of my journey just inching along, bumper to bumper, agonizingly making my way to work. And this wasn’t even in peak hour—this was at midday.
I will get over it in time. I’ve moved a long, long way from South Road. But still, it remains one of the biggest thoroughfares in the city of Adelaide and it’s just an absolute pain in the butt.
Anyway, I’ve raged long enough. That’s my least favorite road. Now you should tell me yours. Let your hatred run free like the waters of the Nile. Then let it go. You deserve peace.
Image credits: YellowMonkey via CC BY-SA 4.0, Lewin Day, Government of South Australia – Department for Infrastructure and Transport, Albert Stoynov via Unsplash License
Not a specific road, but a category: the outskirts of Dallas have several roads that are 4 or even 6 lanes with 55mph speed limits, but no restricted access. So you’ve got people trying to make unprotected lefts in and out of side streets or parking lots across many lanes of 55-65mph traffic. It’s like it’s designed specifically to kill people.
Florida Ave NE in Washington DC. I only live a few blocks from there and I will do anything to avoid it.
The Kennedy Expressway in Chicago – I have lived in Chicago for 16 years and it has been under heavy construction for the last seven of those, with one more coming. I mostly ride my bike but if I need to get on the highway, or if I need to drive to work, I cannot avoid it. Between construction and ‘normal’ traffic levels, driving home from work can take an hour for fifteen miles. Which is why I don’t do it, since riding my bike takes a little over an hour and the CTA also takes an hour. God help me.
Roosevelt Boulevard thru NE Philly – absolute death trap. Close 2nd is Street Rd thru Bucks County
For me, it’s US285 in Colorado between Morrison and Salida. Don’t get me wrong — it’s a beautiful drive that follows river canyons in between drives up and over hills and Kenosha pass. It’s also a non-divided two lane highway with many blind curves, heavy-ish truck and local traffic, and many, many RV’s, travel trailers, toy haulers and looky-loos. Shoulder space ranges from “mostly barely tolerable” to “practically nonexistent”.
The problem is that between the traffic and the relative shortage of safe, marked, passing zones, there are enough idiots who want to zoom around slower traffic that they end up pushing too hard, making unsafe passes or worse, NOT making those passes and causing wrecks. High-speed head-on crashes are frequent, so vigilance is required, even if you’re not in a DRS train of vehicles trapped behind a garbage truck struggling uphill at 45MPH in a no-passing zone. It’s also on the shortest route between Denver and the Four Corners area, where my parents live.
I’ve been driving in the mountains in CO for almost 40 years, in all weather, and that stretch of 285 has become so hazardous that it’s the only highway that I’ll go an extra hour out of my way to avoid, especially now that the aspens up high are starting to turn and the leaf-peepers will be out in force until winter arrives.
I drive 285 all the time and it doesn’t bother me that much, but I agree it’s downright dangerous during leafing season. I mean CDOT has to put up giant illuminated signs that say “CAUTION: HEAVY FOOT TRAFFIC” along a segment of highway with a 65mph speed limit.
Here in the midwest, people have decided it’s courteous to stop in the middle of the road and let others in- sounds nice doesn’t it? Except they do it on the highway, because some knob has decided to stop at the bottom of the on-ramp – so Mr. or Ms. Courteous stops on the highway and waits for them to go – which they don’t – which starts the comedy routine of both of them waving for the other to go ahead – no you! – no you! – while traffic screeches around them trying to avoid a 100 car pileup in rush minute traffic (I’m in KC, we don’t really have rush hour) This happens daily, it’s quite the show when you catch one……
Speer Blvd. in Denver has to be one of my absolute least favorite thoroughfares in existence. Part of it is because of Cherry Creek (the actual creek, not the neighborhood) but some dumbass decided Denver needed a street that followed the creek and upsets the overall street grid, which Denver’s actual downtown road grid is a bit of a CF to begin with because parts of it are at 45 degree angles to the rest of it.
I’ll take Speer over Colorado Blvd any day
I-95 in Virginia…too many wrecks, aggressive truck drivers, and overpriced EZ-Pass lanes as a solution to traffic delays. And why can’t Richmond fix whatever is going so very wrong at their wastewater treatment plant?
The stretch of Highway 401 from Raleigh to Tarboro Road has some of the scariest, most aggressive drivers I’ve ever encountered.
I-70 between KC and St. Louis, Mo. 250 miles of nose to tail semi trucks, all moving at between 55 and 90 mph. How do they do that you ask? The 90 mph ones are only when you’re trying to pass a 55 mph one, who is “racing” with the one in the left lane doing 55.25mph up a mile long hill, and the 90 mph one is on your back bumper trying to push the 55.25 truck up the hill thru you!
There is no lane discipline here so you also find daydreaming folks puttering along in the left lane for miles at a time as they listen to books on tape in their 90’s Buick.
The last time I went that way I took the old hiway 50, far less traffic but it does dwindle down to a 2 lane road past Jeff City and go thru about 100 small towns along the way – still, it’s better than I-70.
They repaved most of I-70, it used to be even worse when it had potholes big enough to lose a semi in…….
I am fresh off a 2+ hour commute home last night in the DC Metro area, but for some reason I think I’ve just accepted my fate when I am on a DC area highway. It is going to suck. 66, 495, 395, 95, Route 5 in MD gets honorable mention. VA drivers are clueless. MD drivers are reckless. Out of state drivers don’t know where they are going. There are too many cars for the road. The HOT lanes are not even “Lexus Lanes” at this point, but more like “Bentley Lanes” for how much they cost in rush hour.
So ignoring my home for a minute, the worst for me in recent memory has to be I-95 in South Carolina. The whole thing. It was like driving on a washboard the whole time. Do they do that on purpose to discourage travelers? Are the federal highway funds being laundered into something else? Mafia win the contracts to pave it?
It wasn’t even the traffic, it was just the constant rough ride and road noise.
The short section of I-95 on my drives to Hilton Head is always one of my least favorite stretches. That road sucks.
I drove through there a few weeks ago and just realized they finally got rid of the ‘BUMP’ that’s been there for more than a decade. But yeah, the concrete surface in SC is notorious for thump, thump, thump – and it’s been that way for a long time. They really need to at least 3 lane I-95 from where 85 and 95 split in VA to the GA/SC border. I remember the decade where they 3 laned 95 in GA and FL and it was miserable, but man, it’s almost always smooth cruising south once you hit the GA/Sc border.
Route 10 in Union County, NJ is miserable. The exchange where Route 46 and 3 meet in Little Falls, NJ has been shit for decades.
The stretch of the 215 from the Moreno Valley to Beaumont, CA is no bueno.
The damn BQE in Brooklyn, northbound. Or by the big picture, I-278 E, any point between bay ridge right up to the bridge.
It’s the only commercial traffic artery connecting a few boroughs of 2M ppl each, and going north (fine, east) the 4 elevated lanes through Sunset Park turn into TWO right before the bridge exits to Manhattan, relieveing some traffic. But not before some major street avenues spill into those weak remaining two lanes creating the most everlasting, worst traffic in a metropolis area of 16M people, and I mean including Jersey.
I absolutely hate it, and it really strangles all movement around the city. Every single delivery in these boroughs (well, except staten island) as well as all traffic out to Long Island has to squeeze through this (or the other piece of shit which is LIE). I hear smart people move to New Rochelle…
Taxes for infrastructure spending you say? We have them, the highest in the solar system. I’ll go ask my local politician where they’re going.
Gotta pay NYPD settlements when they shoot their own guys and two other bystanders over $3.
Interstate 84 in CT. I hate it. I’d rather take the long way through Providence from Boston to Bridgeport. The Merritt Parkway isn’t much better, but at least it is pretty and devoid of trucks.
I-84 is awful because of a variety of factors. Construction? Got it. Short on ramps? Check. High speed? Yep. Ridiculous interchanges with nonsensical backup? Of course!
Didn’t help that a car lost a wheel, veered across traffic, and almost hit my 8 month pregnant wife and I on the way home from a family baby shower. Kind of spoiled the road for us too.
I’ll also add the following roads:
The Mass Pike (You know why)
I-16 in Georgia (Why is it so straight? Where are the exits?)
65 through the Apalachicola National Forest in Florida (Also known as Tate’s Hell. Rough pavement, no stops, no support, no service, just trees and a warning that you are in Tate’s Hell).
Did this happen on July 9th, and if so did you also see the burning mattress on the opposite shoulder?
I was born and raised in Central Florida. I live off of what used to be a calm two-lane county road but has since explosively grown into a pot-holed parking lot. It is turning me into a “fuck cars” sort of person. I’m planning to sell my place and renting closer to work because of this.
It used to take 6-10 minutes to get to the grocery store down the way. I instead pay for Kroger to deliver now because it will take close to an hour to transit back because every fucking single actual NPC will clog that road until 8 pm at night.
If you thought leaving later was smart: there’s a 1/4 mile unsignaled straightaway on this road, and exiting/entering the neighborhood after ~9pm exposes you to being t-boned by the Junior Mid Night Club using it as a drag strip. They have killed several pedestrians walking home and caused countless accidents.
I would give you a like but it seems inappropriate. Man, that’s rough.
The M180 from Doncaster to Grimsby, the esteemed Mr A Clarke may or may not have driven this road – it’s not particularly busy, it’s not dangerous, it’s just incredibly boring. It’s 3 lanes wide, it’s straight and there’s nothing at all to look at. The only breaks from the monotony is wondering if you’ve gone over the bridge over the River Trent yet as the stupor of driving this road has usually kicked in by then.
Then it gets worse, it drops to 2 lanes with trucks heading for the ports overtaking each other at 56mph causing the few cars on it to bunch up but it’s ok as it also switches to a rough concrete surface at this point which makes it sound like all your wheel bearings have suddenly shit themselves along with all 4 tyres going flat especially with the grooves the trucks have worn into the concrete so you are forever fighting the steering to keep heading where you want to go.
Oh and the concrete sections have been patched across the lanes with tarmac, presumably by someone new to the job who didn’t realise that the tarmac should be the same level as the concrete. Unless you have very, very compliant suspension your car will start to oscillate in a way that will soon make any passengers who are car-sick suddenly make their presence felt.
Wonderful.
I have a few, but I have one that I hate in particular…
Highway 99 through the Central Valley in California. Basically between Stockton and Bakersfield. One of my least favorite things in the world is when a semi truck doing like 62.5 mph decides that they need to pass another semi truck that’s doing 62.4 mph, usually up a hill, clogging up the left lane for a mile. Hwy 99 seems to be where truckers perfect that maneuver. I fuckin hate it. Also, nobody who drives that stretch of road seems to have any idea how to use cruise control, nor do they understand what lane discipline is. The 5 freeway from Sacramento Bakersfield isn’t much better, but 99 really takes the fuckin cake for me.
I’ve driven this road many times in the past – My folks lived In Fresno and I lived in Sandy Eggo. Back then the right lane was so torn up by truck traffic that you HAD to drive in the left lane – and when you moved over to let someone scream by at 100+ you were absolutely hating life till you could get back into the left lane again. I’m sure they’ve repaved it by now, right? Right?
Elefantenrennen – Elephant racing is a colloquial term for a situation in which one truck overtakes another on a multi-lane road (usually a motorway ) with a small difference in speed (from wiki)
“I’m on the highway to hell!”
“Roads? Where we’re going, we don’t need roads!”
East “Independence” boulevard heading out of Charlotte. Independence Boulevard, aka route 74, is a divided 2 lane similar to many found in the south, speed limit varies between 35 to 55, stop lights for many cross streets, in Charlotte proper it was made into a regulation highway type road with overpasses and cloverleafs. Outside the county line the D.O.T. had more sinister plans.
When we moved to the Charlotte area 10 years ago, the southeast Charlotte area was already experiencing a boom via the influx of damn yankees like us.
As the population exploded, a plan was formed for an expressway to parallel route 74 so more damn yankees could buy the cheaper land outside Charlotte but still get to work in the city on time. But despite the budget surplus for North Carolina every year, the DOT didn’t have the money to just build the expressway, huh, that’s weird, cause my registration goes up every year as my car’s value goes down, and there’s more and more people paying taxes and registration every year down here.
So to pay for it, the expressway was made a toll, so none of the new damn yankees would drive on it when 74 non-express was free. What to do? Well the obvious solution, make route 74 a “super street”. No they didn’t put a cape on it and call it good, they made all the intersections on route 74 in one town right turn only, and then converted the nice medians down to the right into U-turns. So in the wonderful town of Indian Trail where we first rented, which is split right down the middle by route 74, if you want to go anywhere in town, or out of town, you have to take a right, and if you didn’t want to go right, say you wanted to go straight or god forbid take a left, you have cut over quickly and wait to take a u-turn.
Keep in mind, route 74 was already so over capacity they built an expressway parallel to it! It is way beyond the superstreet model, and the proper solution would’ve been a couple of overpasses like they did in Charlote, but that would cost too much, like the new schools and police Indian Trail needs too, instead they’re just collecting those sweet sweet taxes while the entire infrastructure bursts at the seams from all the new developments, and best they could do was a ‘super street’.
So yeah, it infuriates me, and when we bought a house we actually bought closer to Charlotte so we wouldn’t have to worry as much about the massive increase in developments to the southeast, and also avoid route 74 as much as possible.
Lmao I actually came here to bitch about 77 myself, 277 or independence would rank higher if I had to drive in charlotte itself though. But honestly every road between Belmont and Mooresville has gotten absolutely fucked in the last 10 years or so. Bonus pick is Jetton road, the most beautiful gently curved hilly road to be capped by 35 mph and the most aggressive laser speed tracking I’ve ever seen, such a wasted street that one of our DoT guys in NC called it as such
Oh man, I-77 and the cluster of the toll lanes to Charlotte are another major gripe, varying tolls??? How is that a thing? Take the completely empty toll lanes, could be $5, could be $50, you’ll find out later! Again the state has money, why do we have toll lanes???
It’s not just Charlotte when the NCDOT is making every stroad in the city they can a divided road with limited u-turns. They’ve done it to a bunch of streets in Greenville, too.