Traffic Jam

I got caught up in a traffic jam yesterday.   I was leaving my office and heading over to my vacation house in central Oregon.   The plan was for me to head south from Beaverton, pick up my wife in Wilsonville and then take the southern route to Redmond, OR.   The southern route goes through Salem and then over Santiam pass through Sisters and then up to Redmond.   In theory, this plan should have saved 30 to 45 minutes over having us meet at home and leave from there.   In practice, yesterday, the plan cost me close to 2 hours.

It was clear that something was amiss the moment I got onto OR-217.   I was headed south toward its intersection with I-5 and traffic was already backed up to Greenburg Rd.   (about 2 miles)  I was able to work my way through it relatively quickly, but once I hit I-5 it was clear that something was very wrong.   The freeway was crawling.   I was hoping that it was something that would break up, some sort of Friday afternoon snag, but it didn’t.   It kept crawling.  By the time I reached the Boone’s Ferry exit, another mile or so, I had already spent 30 minutes in the car.   I was frustrated.   I actually saw a friend of mine in his car in another lane.   I waved.  A couple of seconds later my phone rang and it was him.

“Fancy meeting you here”, he said over the cell connection.

“Yeah, this sucks!”

“Yeah, there’s some major wreck at the Boone Bridge in Wilsonville.”

“Oh crap”, I lament!

“Yeah, it’s a huge pileup on the north bound side.”

“What!  Northbound?  Are you saying this is all rubbernecking?”

“Apparently”

“Okay, thanks for the update”, I tell him, and hang up.

Now I’m annoyed.   I’ve still got miles to go to get to Wilsonville and then I have to exit from the freeway to pick up my wife.   I will then, no doubt, be caught in the giant mess that is building in Wilsonville.   There are drivers who are leaving work and trying to get on the freeway, as well as those who have tried to dodge the traffic by taking side roads.   It’s clear that my drive is going to suck, and suck bad.

The accident did turn out to be a 15 car pileup on the northbound side of I-5.  The southbound backup was not entirely because of rubbernecking, but rather because emergency crews closed one of the southbound lanes so that they could access the crash site.   In the end there were two injuries; no one was killed. 

I wonder how many lives were affected by that crash.   Certainly the victims were all affected, but who else?   I lost 2 hours from my weekend.   This is not a huge consequence, but I certainly didn’t appreciate it.   Who missed a flight?   Who missed an important meeting?  Who was late for a date that ended up being the final straw that destroyed the relationship?  How many small fender bender accidents were caused by the bumper to bumper traffic?   How much extra gasoline was burned by thousands of cars sitting, idling for hours?   How much do traffic jams really cost?   That would make for an interesting study.