The I-5 is the Bane of My Existence

I wanted to post a follow up to the previous post about the big rig accident on the 5 north earlier this afternoon. I feel extremely compelled to post about it because I LITERALLY sat in it for almost 4 hours, before finally turning around and heading home.

I left work early today, heading up north to Sacramento with my boyfriend to visit our families. We left around 4:30 this afternoon, thinking, like most of LA does, "OOOooo, if we leave early, we're sure to beat everyone else...". Well that definitely didn't happen. We had stopped to get a Subway sandwich, and as we pulled onto the on-ramp we discovered... a parking lot. The traffic had utterly and completely stopped moving. So, with a van filled with kids from a summer camp in front of us, and a van full of Korean baptist kids behind us, we waited, hoping at any moment that the traffic would suddenly and miraculously disappear. The rapture couldn't have happened at a more opportune time, if you ask me.

More photos under the cut...

We finally moved a little more, progressing off of the on-ramp and into the mess. I had put the car in park, sitting there for about 20 minutes, so we took out my boyfriends laptop and watched an episode of The Office, you know the one where Michael gives his performance reviews while trying to woo Jan? We had very few disturbances while watching, and finished the episode easily. After being in the car for three and half hours, nearing 8 o'clock, we decided to pull off, not wanting to drive 400 miles and get home at 3 AM.

Mostly what this did was make me think of what a mess we've gotten ourselves into. And by we, I mean California, and in the greater sense, the United States. Why the hell do we pour so much money into building and maintaining roads, highways, freeways, when we could be using it on, oh, I don't know.. AWESOME BULLET TRAINS?!?

Think about it. We'd get places faster, my guess would be that they'd be cheaper, probably safer as well.

Japan's bullet trains, or Shinkansen, go an average of 164mph. If I were to take one of these trains from my apartment, to my home town, it would take me less than two-and-a-half hours to go a total of 400 miles. It usually takes me anywhere from 5-7 hours, depending on traffic.
So not only would we enjoy all of those benefits, but wouldn't it also cause people to use cars less, thereby helping our environmental woes as well?

We as Californians need to get with the program and get this shit going. We're way better then the other states, we know it, and we need to set an example by making bullet trains a much higher priority.

This map showed the traffic is still horrible now at 10 PM.