Comments for San Diego: Day 1: Traffic

San Diego: Day 1: Traffic: 05/29/07

For Memorial Day, we drove down to San Diego (via South Pasadena) to see first Ian's folks and then my family. We had originally planned to drive down on Saturday morning all the way to San Diego but Ian's folks wanted to see us too so we braved the Friday traffic to stop at South Pasadena.

Ian did all the drive down to San Diego (thirteen hours broken up across two days). The hardest parts of the drive were getting out of the Bay Area (after an abortive attempt to leave via the 580, we back tracked to the 101). It took us almost 4 hours to get to Salinas where we stopped for dinner.

The remainder of the drive down to South Pasadena went quickly. We arrived at one in the morning, after contemplating stopping for a motel.

The remaining 100 or so miles were just as hard as the initial 100. The slog through Los Angeles is always frustrating and staying on the 5 is nearly impossible the way it is set up through that area. The 5 is a major freeway but in Los Angeles it is broken into pieces so that the littler regional freeways can spawn off of it.

If I were to redesign the freeways in Los Angeles, I would put priority on making it easier to stay on the numbered route. If one is on the 5, one should be able to stay the 5 without having to zigzag across lanes of traffic. The zigzagging should be left for the freeways as the spawn (so the 605, 710, 10, etc.)

The final killer though on the trip down to San Diego was the traffic around Del Mar. The tourists were stopping to watch the hot air balloons take off. These beautiful balloons follow this same routine every afternoon around sunset and have been more at least twenty-five years! There is nothing unique about these hot air balloons. But no, stupid tourists had to make the last ten miles of my trip a living hell just to watch the damn balloons inflate.

traffic | san diego