14th Street Bridge Bottleneck of Hell

I feel that this part of my drive is so horrendous, that it deserves it's own page (and special font.. wooooo!). Even this picture that I just spent thirty minutes constructing doesn't come close to justifying how horrible it is.

It never fails, every morning traffic comes to a complete stop here. Sometimes backed up for miles. If it takes over an hour to move a mile, it is because there is a wreck at this 'intersection', quite possibly at the 'point of death' illustrated on the picture.

This is located on I-395, going North. Even though you are really going East, you are supposed to think and believe you are going North, because that's what the sign says. The bridge starts at exactly the point where the top of the picture ends. It's four lanes wide. In case you are wondering, this is the same intersection I drew up on my first 'Traffic Rant' page, though this one is a lot more functional, as it shows the 'whole' thing, and not just the part I nearly wreck in everyday.

By the way, this road does an 'S' curve too, though the picture shows it going straight. This was done because I can't draw Bezier curves like I used to :/

Again, I explain the illustrious 'Point of Death'. This is the point where the people in the second to rightmost lane have been sitting there, watching the cars in the left two lanes drive past them for too long. They are frustrated, because they see that the lane to their right must merge into theirs, possibly (oh, no!) in front of them. They also see that even more cars must merge (possibly) in front of them once the right lane ends. Well, they don't take it after a certain point. Even though they've been sitting in that lane for 30+ minutes, that last 5 is what they decide not to wait for. So they invariably cut people off in the left lane (from a dead stop), that are doing from 10 - 30mph.

I do not drive in that second to leftmost lane anymore. I drive in the far left lane. What kind of sucks about that, is because I don't have much room from PMO#5 to this point to meander from the right lane to the left. Especially since nobody lets you in, and everybody drives upon each other's bumper.

Also what we see up there on the left, is an exit. Due to the extreme angle of the turn, you must slow down to about 25mph to take it liberally. If traffic happens to be flowing in the left lane, and someone wants that exit this causes problems. Most people will slow down to about 10 - 15 mph to get off there. Anyone behind them in the left lane gets mad, and jerks over into the crowded lane on the right to avoid having to slow down.

And one last thing.. The lane that comes in on the right, right before the bridge usually has a lot of taxi cabs that want to go to D.C. At the end of the bridge, the left two lanes go to D.C., and the right three stay on I-395. This causes problems because they need to get over at least two lanes, in less than 1/8th of a mile. This wouldn't be so bad if people would just leave space in front of them.. But instead you have the cab forcing his way over making people slam on their brakes and changing lanes suddenly. More on this particular subject on the next page.