Traffic Jam
In the last four and half years Melinda and I have traveled all over the country. I have never seen traffic as as bad as central Florida. Ever. Even Los Angeles traffic was better managed than this. It’s not that the drivers are doing anything stupid (except for the people doing 95 mph on I-4 trying to make up for the time they are going to be sitting in traffic in a few miles or the people that ride up the emergency lane at 60 mph, okay…those are the crazy ones!), it’s just that there are too many people for the amount of roadways. The government thinks they are helping by doing construction and adding a lane. Add FOUR damned lanes! If you are going to hose up traffic even more, you might as well help fix the problem instead of just making it worse.
I-4 Corridor to Hell
Let me give you some examples: I drive from Davenport, FL ( about 10 miles west of Orlando) to just outside Tampa to the Hard Rock Casino. 52 miles. It takes an hour and a half to TWO hours to do it. This is on Interstate 4! Traffic comes to a complete halt for the first 7 miles to the west of Davenport, then it becomes a rough facsimile of NASCAR for about 25 miles, then it grinds to a complete halt again about 20 miles outside of Tampa. Now, I am sitting on motorcycle in the Florida sun sucking up exhaust fumes. You have about 25 minutes of actual progress and about an hour and a quarter of sitting in line. The 10 miles toward Orlando is even worse. The trip to the Strawberry Festival, fuhgetaboutit. I get that those are special circumstances, but the Magic Kingdom has been there about 50 years (and the Strawberry Festival about the same), has no one noticed the hundreds of thousands of cars just sitting there burning up expensive gas and nearly overheating?
Here’s an idea: get rid of all those grassy medians (that are acting as burnt-out-grass dumpsters anyway, I know, I’ve had plenty of time to look at them) and make them into extra lanes. They don’t mind using imminent domain, use it to take enough land from the unused area on either side of I-4 and add 2 or 3 more lanes to each side. That should add 3-4 lanes to both directions. Even that may not fix the problem, but it sure as hell can’t hurt it.
Traffic is not just on I-4
I just came back from Walmart in Davenport. It’s 5.7 miles up Lake Wilson Road. It took me an hour to get home. AN HOUR! The other day, I drove to PetSmart (7 miles away) and it was a 2 hour round trip, using back roads and not including my 10 minutes of shopping time.
Back to Central Florida?
One of the things we are doing during our travels is to investigate possible locations for Phase 3 (retirement after our travels). I am going to tell you right now. It will NEVER be central Florida. My blood pressure can’t take this. Not only will we never move here, if I have any say at all, we will never camp in this area again. We are staying at Rainbow Chase RV Resort and it is a nice enough place, but it is centrally located in Traffic Hell. The government is adding a lane right outside the campground. One lane. That’s so cute.
If you’re like me and can’t stand traffic, avoid central Florida. We’ve now stayed in the panhandle and enjoyed that. I lived in Daytona for years. We’re headed to the Jacksonville area for a month. We’ve stayed in Ocala (northwest of Orlando) at Grand Lakes RV and that was a nice place and the traffic around there (even on I-75) was decent. Hell, even the Keys, where there is only one two-lane road in and out, was better than this. I consider myself a Floridian (my driver’s license says so!) but I will NEVER be a central Floridian. I hate to say “never’, but they can’t build enough roads in my lifetime to make this traffic better.
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<b>DATE:</b> Feb 19 – March 19, 2023 1 MONTH
<b>RV PARK:</b> Rainbow Chase RV
<b>THOUSAND TRAILS:</b> N $640 +elect /4 wks
<b>ADVENTURES:</b> Tampa RV Show, poker @ Hard Rock (not bad), afternoon with Canslers in Disney Springs
<b>CITY:</b> Davenport, FL (about 13 miles east of Orlando)
<b>RETURN:</b> No. (small, not tons of amenities, family owned) was okay to visit, but traffic everywhere was horrific. Jammed.
RVonTheRoadYet.com is a blog to keep our friends and family informed of our latest adventures or misadventures. We are NOT RV professionals, doctors, lawyers, or travel guides. We are a couple of people who have decided to embrace the full-time RV lifestyle of idiots and gypsies.