The problem is the bridge at Pelham can’t be expanded to add another lane without having to demo and rebuild it to widen it for another lane to ease the on-ramps.
All the widening they’ve done will only alleviate so much.
You people don't need more lanes, you need to use the lanes you have properly first. Before asking me to shell out more taxes to build you another one to half use, let's try to follow all the new signs we had to pay for reminding people to move their slow ass to the right.
Used to deal with this and it was a huge source of stress. I was so angry during my hour long commute. I vowed to never allow myself to get stuck in that commuting hell again. We moved and now live close enough to bike to work. My quality of life has improved tremendously.
It’s simply too many cars, too many merges and too many big rigs, all these things come together to just destroy traffic flow. Once those tractors slow down they have a hard time getting back up to speed if it’s on an uphill part. It’s just miserable. There are some poorly planned merges as well that contribute. Road just can’t handle the amount of traffic it has. And the road work /weird line painting in parts just makes it worse. I avoid at all costs.
I agree with you about poorly planned merges but as for the rest, interstates were created to maintain a steady flow of traffic. The amount of cars should never be an issue. There could be a million cars on the interstate all simultaneously going 70mph. Traffic starts when Kelly in the Chevy Sonic takes her eyes off her phone because she sees a pretty castle (California Dreaming) in her peripheral vision, feels the rough pavement, and slams on the brakes. Everyone behind her has to do the same. People who probably couldn’t pass a driver’s test today merge over to avoid slowing down, but it has the opposite effect on everyone behind them, who also merge over to avoid slowing down. Now every lane is backed up. The people further back see brake lights and start slowing down. So on and so forth. All because of Kelly and the pretty castle.
Theoretically. Unfortunately, that’s not how traffic works in the real world.
In the real world, speed is pretty much inversely correlated to density.
As there are more cars on the freeway, tiny little errors have more of an effect, and unfortunately, we all make tiny little mistakes because we’re human. These mistakes compound and slow things down.
Right. It sounds like you’re disagreeing, but we’re saying the same thing. The example was a million drivers all going 70mph (theoretical / hypothetical), one driver hitting the brakes (tiny little error), causing unnecessary merging in other lanes (compounding), and braking further back (slowing down).
Looking down at your phone is not a tiny mistake. It's purposefully blinding yourself to the road ahead of you. That's not an oopsie, that's assault on all the drivers behind them - it's not just a tiny mistake because most of the time nothing bad happens. Language like yours I see and hear all around town and is certainly part of why the situation on our roads never seems to change - you normalize shitty, purposeful behavior by calling it a "tiny little mistake".
In a town where nobody will hold a driver sitting at a now-green light responsible with a gentle toot of their horn, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised neighbors and friends are unwilling to address the bad drivers in their social circles. I'm trying to make a larger point about the way we talk to and about the poor drivers around us, so sorry if you feel personally attacked, your post just tee'd it up the best.
The lack of progress on a problem we all agree exists and costs us time AND money makes me crazy. The cowards here won't even toot their horn and react when I do as if that were questioning/attacking the driver's moral character. If we can't stop our friends and neighbors from texting and driving or make them use a turn signal, what hope do we have talking through much more complicated problems like politics, etc.?
It’s both the clowns driving as you described but also the clowns playing fast and furious during rush hour. I agree 1000% with you if everyone just went 0-10 miles over the speed limit and used the lanes correctly (left for pass, middle for travel, right for merging) traffic wouldn’t be an issue.
Sadly this is something that simply isn’t taught around here.
Had to travel to Spartanburg this morning. Traveling 85 N in the left lane and I’m behind a car with 864DRIVING plastered all over it. Some driving school instructor by himself, so it wasn’t a student driver. He was constantly going anywhere from 50-60 with no one in front of him, and neither going slower nor faster than the car next to him, preventing myself or anyone to pass for at least 4 miles.
People, if you’re in the left lane and people to your right are going the same or faster than you, you’re in the wrong lane.
I swear on every single miserable morning commute there’s a different white base model F-150 that belongs to a plumbing, painting, or roofing company driving in the left lane with one goal in mind:
match the speed of the semi in the middle lane to the nearest hundredth mph
I moved here 30 years ago. I have since found a way to get around and in and out of town in many directions without using 85 or 385. I’m one of those paranoid old people that drive slow with my wheelchair van, and prefer right hand turns. You are welcome to all of you that I haven’t made angry cause I care for y’all and stay out of your way on the interstate. 😄😄😄
Lmao I just went to NYC for the first time recently and was amazed how all of their freeways are like 3 lanes and moved quite a bit smoother than Atlanta with their 7 lane freeways.
If you leave at the wrong time it can take you just as long to get from Midtown ATL to 285 as it does to get the rest of the way back home to Greenville.
You are correct. But keep in mind, some people here, including myself, remember when woodruff road was the fast way to get from Lauren's Rd to the Reidville area.
Drivers licenses should be as difficult to get as a pilot's license tbh. I didn't think my pilot's license was particularly hard, but the bar was well above a driver's license.
You don't need a pilot's license to get to work or buy groceries. They can do that when we have public transportation that runs from sunrise until midnight and serves 95% of the population with wait times of no more than 15 minutes. We built our cities wrong 75 years ago and can't fix in a decade or two.
The problem isn’t growth, it’s the way we make cities grow. We mostly build houses in places where there’s no connectivity to amenities or jobs, so walking or transit just aren’t options. 92% of people in Grenville County commute to work alone by car. Walking, biking, transit and carpooling is less than 6% of all local traffic in Greenville. Add in through traffic on interstates and no wonder things are a mess.
Hah, for years I did electrical work for a company right off exit 52 on GSP property. We’d get off at 4:30-5pm… so by the time I got to exit 19, I would be in a rotten mood 🤣😂
Between exit 52 and Area 51 it’s a nightmare tho, forreal.
This is the reason I will not apply to, accept, and have turned down a job opportunity where I would have to use 85N to commute. But I do commute to Anderson happily.
I’ll never forget the morning I went to class and was stuck in traffic on I-85 North due to 2 accidents, 1 in each direction. Didn’t get off the road until close to noon 🫠
exit ramps need to be long as fuck and allow more time for idiots and terrified drivers to merge and morons on the interstate need to learn to leave space or lane over for merging vehicles. too many moving parts and too many careless drivers with me first attitude meanwhile driving like a shit head will get you to your destination not even a minute sooner
It’s also due to the fact that Greenville keeps getting added to “best city to live in” and “top 10 places in the US lists” and everyone keeps moving to just Greenville county. I’ve also noticed that if SCHP has someone pulled over on the opposite side of 85, people tend to think that they have to slow down because somehow our HP can just immediately morph into their cars right behind them.
I literally moved for this reason. I moved from Duncan to Taylors to avoid this. I did it every single day for 5 years and just couldn’t take one more day of it.
Well, since you know it's there, don't cry about it and go around it. Common sense goes a long way. If you're too dumb to know how to use a GPS app, you probably shouldn't have your license
Everyday I travel southbound through there. And every day once I pass the Pelham overpass, I say “what the fuck was the problem?”
That’s the worst part. Sitting in traffic an hour a day for no real reason. Just incompetence
Big amount of people living in one place, big amount of cars
So do most places people actually want to live and they don't come to a halt for no reason on a daily basis.
The absolutely shit on ramp at exit 54 is the real problem. Pelham won't be bad once construction is finished.
The problem is the bridge at Pelham can’t be expanded to add another lane without having to demo and rebuild it to widen it for another lane to ease the on-ramps. All the widening they’ve done will only alleviate so much.
You people don't need more lanes, you need to use the lanes you have properly first. Before asking me to shell out more taxes to build you another one to half use, let's try to follow all the new signs we had to pay for reminding people to move their slow ass to the right.
This is the real reason this sub exists. Take my upvote.
Why has this section of road been under construction since the signing of the Magna Carta?
The stretch of 85 near Gaffney has been under construction since the beginning of time
And it will be under construction until we colonize Mars.
Used to deal with this and it was a huge source of stress. I was so angry during my hour long commute. I vowed to never allow myself to get stuck in that commuting hell again. We moved and now live close enough to bike to work. My quality of life has improved tremendously.
I work on Pelham. And I’m lucky enough to get off at 5pm. I STRONGLY approve this message.
I chuckle every time I get that to area and Waze app says” there’s a history of crashes in this area. Please be careful.”
It’s simply too many cars, too many merges and too many big rigs, all these things come together to just destroy traffic flow. Once those tractors slow down they have a hard time getting back up to speed if it’s on an uphill part. It’s just miserable. There are some poorly planned merges as well that contribute. Road just can’t handle the amount of traffic it has. And the road work /weird line painting in parts just makes it worse. I avoid at all costs.
I agree with you about poorly planned merges but as for the rest, interstates were created to maintain a steady flow of traffic. The amount of cars should never be an issue. There could be a million cars on the interstate all simultaneously going 70mph. Traffic starts when Kelly in the Chevy Sonic takes her eyes off her phone because she sees a pretty castle (California Dreaming) in her peripheral vision, feels the rough pavement, and slams on the brakes. Everyone behind her has to do the same. People who probably couldn’t pass a driver’s test today merge over to avoid slowing down, but it has the opposite effect on everyone behind them, who also merge over to avoid slowing down. Now every lane is backed up. The people further back see brake lights and start slowing down. So on and so forth. All because of Kelly and the pretty castle.
Theoretically. Unfortunately, that’s not how traffic works in the real world. In the real world, speed is pretty much inversely correlated to density. As there are more cars on the freeway, tiny little errors have more of an effect, and unfortunately, we all make tiny little mistakes because we’re human. These mistakes compound and slow things down.
Right. It sounds like you’re disagreeing, but we’re saying the same thing. The example was a million drivers all going 70mph (theoretical / hypothetical), one driver hitting the brakes (tiny little error), causing unnecessary merging in other lanes (compounding), and braking further back (slowing down).
Looking down at your phone is not a tiny mistake. It's purposefully blinding yourself to the road ahead of you. That's not an oopsie, that's assault on all the drivers behind them - it's not just a tiny mistake because most of the time nothing bad happens. Language like yours I see and hear all around town and is certainly part of why the situation on our roads never seems to change - you normalize shitty, purposeful behavior by calling it a "tiny little mistake". In a town where nobody will hold a driver sitting at a now-green light responsible with a gentle toot of their horn, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised neighbors and friends are unwilling to address the bad drivers in their social circles. I'm trying to make a larger point about the way we talk to and about the poor drivers around us, so sorry if you feel personally attacked, your post just tee'd it up the best. The lack of progress on a problem we all agree exists and costs us time AND money makes me crazy. The cowards here won't even toot their horn and react when I do as if that were questioning/attacking the driver's moral character. If we can't stop our friends and neighbors from texting and driving or make them use a turn signal, what hope do we have talking through much more complicated problems like politics, etc.?
If only people would understand some of this. Ugh, thanks for beating me to it. The more people that know the more likely we can have a better future.
It’s both the clowns driving as you described but also the clowns playing fast and furious during rush hour. I agree 1000% with you if everyone just went 0-10 miles over the speed limit and used the lanes correctly (left for pass, middle for travel, right for merging) traffic wouldn’t be an issue.
Sadly this is something that simply isn’t taught around here. Had to travel to Spartanburg this morning. Traveling 85 N in the left lane and I’m behind a car with 864DRIVING plastered all over it. Some driving school instructor by himself, so it wasn’t a student driver. He was constantly going anywhere from 50-60 with no one in front of him, and neither going slower nor faster than the car next to him, preventing myself or anyone to pass for at least 4 miles. People, if you’re in the left lane and people to your right are going the same or faster than you, you’re in the wrong lane.
I swear on every single miserable morning commute there’s a different white base model F-150 that belongs to a plumbing, painting, or roofing company driving in the left lane with one goal in mind: match the speed of the semi in the middle lane to the nearest hundredth mph
This.
I moved here 30 years ago. I have since found a way to get around and in and out of town in many directions without using 85 or 385. I’m one of those paranoid old people that drive slow with my wheelchair van, and prefer right hand turns. You are welcome to all of you that I haven’t made angry cause I care for y’all and stay out of your way on the interstate. 😄😄😄
On a similar note: If the wreck is on the other side of the interstate, don't slow down and gawk at it. They have enough problems. Keep moving.
Fucking shits like that on my way home at 12. It never fucking ends
I blame the over abundance of truly idiotic drivers.
You have not lived till you play in Atlanta traffic everyday. Greenville traffic like hypper speed
Lmao I just went to NYC for the first time recently and was amazed how all of their freeways are like 3 lanes and moved quite a bit smoother than Atlanta with their 7 lane freeways. If you leave at the wrong time it can take you just as long to get from Midtown ATL to 285 as it does to get the rest of the way back home to Greenville.
True. Drive in any big city in TX is a dream. They have frontage roads that Pharrell all interstates and people are much nicer.
You are correct. But keep in mind, some people here, including myself, remember when woodruff road was the fast way to get from Lauren's Rd to the Reidville area.
Don’t forget the truck drivers and others who merge over for no good reason. Learn to scissor merge and the whole issue in that area will be solved.
Drivers licenses should be as difficult to get as a pilot's license tbh. I didn't think my pilot's license was particularly hard, but the bar was well above a driver's license.
You don't need a pilot's license to get to work or buy groceries. They can do that when we have public transportation that runs from sunrise until midnight and serves 95% of the population with wait times of no more than 15 minutes. We built our cities wrong 75 years ago and can't fix in a decade or two.
Stuff nightmares are made of …
Huzzah, a complaint about traffic!
It's like we are building housing continuously but didn't expect more people!!
The problem isn’t growth, it’s the way we make cities grow. We mostly build houses in places where there’s no connectivity to amenities or jobs, so walking or transit just aren’t options. 92% of people in Grenville County commute to work alone by car. Walking, biking, transit and carpooling is less than 6% of all local traffic in Greenville. Add in through traffic on interstates and no wonder things are a mess.
Hah, for years I did electrical work for a company right off exit 52 on GSP property. We’d get off at 4:30-5pm… so by the time I got to exit 19, I would be in a rotten mood 🤣😂 Between exit 52 and Area 51 it’s a nightmare tho, forreal.
This is the reason I will not apply to, accept, and have turned down a job opportunity where I would have to use 85N to commute. But I do commute to Anderson happily.
The lanes narrow and shift slightly to the right around the construction. On the weekends the traffic still slows down.
show someone this map when they ask about moving to greer
I work in Woodruff, and I had to start taking woodruff rd all the way home because of this
Get off at Brockman McClimon Turn left on 101 North (away from BMW) Turn left onto Cannon drive That road turns into North Street You're all welcome
don’t start sharing this info
My favorite explanation for traffic https://youtu.be/iHzzSao6ypE
I’ll never forget the morning I went to class and was stuck in traffic on I-85 North due to 2 accidents, 1 in each direction. Didn’t get off the road until close to noon 🫠
exit ramps need to be long as fuck and allow more time for idiots and terrified drivers to merge and morons on the interstate need to learn to leave space or lane over for merging vehicles. too many moving parts and too many careless drivers with me first attitude meanwhile driving like a shit head will get you to your destination not even a minute sooner
HahaHaha 🤣😂🤣
It’s also due to the fact that Greenville keeps getting added to “best city to live in” and “top 10 places in the US lists” and everyone keeps moving to just Greenville county. I’ve also noticed that if SCHP has someone pulled over on the opposite side of 85, people tend to think that they have to slow down because somehow our HP can just immediately morph into their cars right behind them.
I literally moved for this reason. I moved from Duncan to Taylors to avoid this. I did it every single day for 5 years and just couldn’t take one more day of it.
you’d think there’s a pile up just to find out people are slowing down so much because the lanes are a little bit more narrow i fucking hate it
I mean y'all could stop crashing constantly.
Omg I feel this in my soul
If you’re someone who sees a wreck on the opposite side of the road and slows down to look at it… please do everyone a favor and drive off a cliff 🕺🏼
Well, since you know it's there, don't cry about it and go around it. Common sense goes a long way. If you're too dumb to know how to use a GPS app, you probably shouldn't have your license