<< Superbowl Party | Home | Making Decisions >>

Metered On-Ramps Suck My Will To Live

This week I'm bringing you an extra-special Traffic Asshole.

I went to visit one of my potential mortgage brokers on Friday afternoon and, seeing as how it was 2:00p, figured I'd head home and work from there. You know - beat the traffic, so to speak.

Imagine my surprise to get into this:

Sitting... waiting... and it's only 2pm!

What the hell is going on here?

I continued into this quagmire, merging with some other traffic, equally backed up:

Continue to merge...

And when I finally got to the head of this thing, what was it? A wreck? A death?

No, something much more insidious still:

Ramp Signal On

A metered on-ramp.

What a load of shit, man. Whoever figured out this metered on-ramp thing should be fucking shot. What else could cause such traffic devastation in the afternoon?

I sure as hell won't miss that once I've moved closer to work.

Print | posted @ Monday, February 02, 2004 1:57 PM

Comments on this entry:

Gravatar # Re: Metered On-Ramps Suck My Will To Live
by Tanya at 2/4/2004 9:38 AM
What is a metered on-ramp? We don't have that in Canada. Is it a speed trap on a ramp or something??

We once had photoradar, so that cops didn't even have to be there, just set up the radar and it takes a picture of your licence plate and sends you a ticket in the mail with the pic of your car and plate and the speed you were going. Problem with that is that I might have been driving Dad's car, but he gets the ticket, and it didn't take flow of traffic into consideration. If everyone else is going 120 k/hr (~74 miles/hr) in a 100 zone, a cop's not gonna pull YOU over, they wait for some guy going 130 clicks (~80 miles/hr). You also couldn't barter with it.

They're talking about bringing it back to get more money. Bastards.
Gravatar # Re: Metered On-Ramps Suck My Will To Live
by Travis at 2/4/2004 11:15 AM
If ONLY we didn't have metered on-ramps.

For those who don't have them, a metered on-ramp is a freeway on-ramp that has a traffic light at the end, right before you get on the freeway. There are typically two lanes, and the two traffic lights there alternate red and green, so each lane gets a turn to let one car at a time go.

Supposedly this alleviates the highway getting clogged with people who don't know how to properly merge. No one ever thinks about the effect it has on side roads, though, and the on-ramp I was stuck at was actually at the intersection of two major highways. Crazy.

We have photo radar in Oregon, too, and I've even gotten a photo radar ticket once. It's the only ticket I've ever gotten and I was able to describe the circumstances (no cars on the road, clear weather, going 36mph in a 30mph zone) and get out of it, but it's pretty stupid.

Oh, and the flow of traffic thing doesn't hold up in Oregon. Cops will pull two and three cars over at a time when the flow is too fast. I had a friend who got caught like that once. He asked why he got singled out from the rest of traffic.

The cop asked my friend, "You ever gone fishing?"

My friend said, "Yeah."

Cop asked, "Did you catch all the fish?"

I guess when you put it that way... I agree, though. Photo radar sucks.

Your comment:

Title:
Name:
Email:
Website:
 
Italic Underline Blockquote Hyperlink
 
 
Please add 3 and 4 and type the answer here: