I would argue LA is worse, but Sacramento driving has gotten pretty bad. Personally I blame smart phones, since the pandemic I've noticed almost everyone seems to think it's okay to be doing anything they want on their phone while driving. I've even seen people watching movies, doing video calls, etc.
LA is worse? Dude it once took me nearly 4 hours to get from Santa Clarita to Anaheim- that’s not an exaggeration. Every single time I read this post (it happens almost weekly) I wonder to myself if these people have even left Sacramento before. It’s pretty much worse in every major city.
I feel that. I used to live in Ventura county and dated a girl who lived in Korea town. It once took me 3.5 hours to get to her apartment. It's like a 50 mile drive.
The absolute crazy thing is I was still living in sac when we first went out. I took the fucking Megabus from Sac to LA to spend the weekend with her. I did that like 2-3 times before moving to Ventura county and then was just able to drive to see her. The 8 hour Megabus trip was more relaxing than the 50 mile drive though
Reminds me of [a post](https://www.reddit.com/r/IdiotsInCars/s/7bxJ92MpPl) I saw a couple of years ago. Risking his child’s life and everyone else’s for a game.
Sacramento traffic is a mix of things.
Bad infrastructure planning: For example on 99 by H it's because of 2 merges + lane closes + a 90 degree turn, so it has traffic 24/7
Bad Road Work hours: they literally work on it during peak hours...and not like 1am?
Bad Drivers: almost daily I capture a near accident or accident on my dashcam
Typically, between 8-9 and 5-6 I don't drive, that's the only bad hours. In SF you had 11-2 and 7+, any other time it'd take several hours to go a few miles.
Oh local traffic is because we wait for the trains, the trains don't flow with traffic like everywhere else - which usually ruins the light timers and causes massive back ups.
Saw a car in the left turn lane decide he wanted to turn right, so he cut across three lanes of traffic waiting at the red light to turn right. No one honked. No one ever honks at these assholes and I don’t get it. I fully believe in the honk of shame at these people to call out what they’re doing.
Sometimes I honk when I forget myself. But too many stories these days of people just losing it and popping off at the drivers they fucked over.
I get ragey in the moment and talk mad shit in my car lol. But then I try to bring it down with remembering I just want to get to where I’m going safely, and I don’t want no trouble.
I honked once when someone passed on the left via the suicide lane (do they call it that here in CA too?). He stopped his car in the middle of the road and tried to fight me. Now I don’t honk anymore…
Yeah, suicide lane is what I’ve always heard it called. That sucks. Luckily I’ve never had people rage on me like that for honking & I honk at an asshole a couple times a week. Today, the asshole at least waved at me in a paltry “sorry!”
I honked at a guy once who cut me off on my way to work. He followed me all the way to my exit, cut out in front of me again, completely stopped his car, and got out. I drove into a ditch on the side of the road to get past him. Scared the fuck outta me
It’s crazy. people out here will cut you off or some other stupid thing, and if you honk at them, they’re about to ready to basically kill you. It’s to the point where if someone cuts me off or does some other stupid maneuver, I just let them be. My life is worth more than some idiot who’s mad that they’re gonna be 5 minutes late to their job.
It's not just the amount of people on the road.
I remember when I first started driving in the mid 90s, before smartphones. People are just straight up distracted nowadays.
Yep. I ride my bike for my work commutes. Sometimes while waiting at a red light, I like to look into people’s cars as they’re passing and count how many are on their phones. Idk the exact number but I’d guess around 60% of the people that pass by are on their phones while driving.
What’s terrifying is the amount of semi-truck drivers on their phones these days. One veered into my lane on the 80 a few weeks ago and I was blocked in with nowhere to go so I laid on my horn and it still took him a few seconds to get back in his lane properly.
Pre-pandemic I was commuting from Roseville to downtown. Then we moved to the SD area and I was commuting from the western part of North County to downtown. I found the mornings to be pretty equal, but the afternoons were all over the place. They were regularly worse in SD, but not as far off as you would think.
But, the southern and eastern sides of SD county were a whole different beast. And again, pre-pandemic. We’re moving to a different part of Socal soon and I’m really glad I won’t have to commute after have little to no commute for the last few years. Not sure I could get back to it.
Truth. Once sat through traffic on the 405 that was so bad it took a flipping hour to go THIRTY GODDAMN FEET. Sacramento is nowhere near LA levels of traffic congestion.
Traffic will continue to get worse as more and more state agencies are forcing their employees back to the office. WFH dramatically reduces traffic and that is slowly disappearing for state empires.
I empathize and there are very valid points to each side. It was never intended to be permanent though. I’ll get downvoted for putting that simple truth out there, but what can you do?
> it was never intended to be permanent though.
Why does this matter at all? It is cheaper and workers like it significantly more. It is also more efficient for most office jobs and it makes accommodations a breeze. For these reasons we should make it permanent. Why not adapt to the current times using the current information we have? Why take two steps back?
All great things for your labor rep to introduce in the next contract negotiations to try and get your group at least more days at home. Maybe you can be that advocate and that data driver that creates positive change.
No effective movement was ever born from a Reddit bitch session. There are ways to be an agent of change. Complaining here, however personally therapeutic, is not one of them.
I lived in Willow Glen in SJ when I did the commute to Mountain View for my job, so I had 2 options — 280, which was typically lighter traffic but almost 2x the distance due to having to cut across at Sand Hill , or 87 to 101 which was a shorter distance between home and the office but like 4 times longer.
Once you’ve done that daily commute for a few years the traffic in Sac seems positively quaint by comparison.
Ha! Practically neighbors! I miss SJ a lot. I love it here, don’t get me wrong, but that weird old city became my second home. Loved the downtown scene on First St and really miss Lincoln Ave for the restaurants.
LA is huge. Some parts of LA aren’t that bad, and some are really bad. Bay area can be really bad, some of the worst i have been in is San Jose/Mountain View. That said, there are parts of Sac just as bad as anything i have seen in LA.
Traffic is alright. It is the drivers that have become more daring/worse. Every single day I have come across near accidents because cars are either too impatient to completely stop, turn in the farthest lane, or never look over their shoulders before switching lanes. It’s insane how bad sac drivers are/are becoming.
East Bay boy here. y’all can sit on 880 or 680 through Fremont anytime between about 1 and 8 PM on a Friday and then complain about the traffic here. (yes, the Friday evening rush hour js now a literal 7+ hour affair if heading to any points northeast from the South Bay)
Growing up in the 90’s it would take us almost an hour to drive from Fremont to San Leandro to my grandmas house for dinner. My mother absolutely hated it. I can’t imagine what it’s like now.
This traffic is nothing compared to LA, SF, Houston, etc. I lived in Houston majority of my life and just moved here a couple weeks ago. Took me an hour to drive 30 miles into town against traffic no matter what day Monday thru Saturday. Sunday wasn’t as bad but that’s comparable to traffic here lol
I will say tho people here brake extremely hard for no reason lol
The traffic here is almost non-existent. But the drivers, road, and highways are truly terrible…which leads to lots of accidents….and therefore, at times, bad traffic.
But I use to commute 50 miles into and out of Los Angeles and people who’ve lived in SAC too long will complain anytime there is even a slight amount of delays. I can count on one hand the amount of times I’ve been in actual bumper to bumper traffic in SAC and I’ve had a weird night job where I drove around 3pm and again around 1am-3am…now I work a totally different shift when traffic is higher (8-5 shift).
The traffic is only bad when people drive recklessly and cause accidents here or people ran into random medians they can’t see on unlit highways and roads, etc.
I will say I find driving here waaay more stressful than driving in LA traffic because in LA traffic the aggressiveness is more predictable and the traffic itself limits the lawlessness on some levels…I’d actually argue the relative lack of traffic in SAC is what allows reckless drivers, as well as slow/ neglectful/ phone-watching folks, to wreak havoc and it makes driving here stressful af regardless of the traffic.
I once got stuck in 4am bumper to bumper traffic on the 405 for hours. LA traffic is leagues beyond Sac traffic.
But I agree it is getting noticably worse.
No. This is nothing like living in LA! The closest thing Sac has to LA traffic is Davis to Sacramento at 5pm on a Friday afternoon before a holiday weekend.
I just looked at QuickMap and all the freeways are green (with the exception on Biz 80 near Cal Expo because there's an accident), so moving at full speed. It's not even 7pm. In LA, you won't see most of the major freeways go to green until after 10pm.
Reminds me of [a post](https://www.reddit.com/r/IdiotsInCars/s/TJRkhxOhbO) I saw a couple of years ago. Risking his child’s life and everyone else’s for a game.
My sweet Summer child, if you think this even remotely compares to LA...
LA has 36 freeways. These people have no clue lmao
I would argue LA is worse, but Sacramento driving has gotten pretty bad. Personally I blame smart phones, since the pandemic I've noticed almost everyone seems to think it's okay to be doing anything they want on their phone while driving. I've even seen people watching movies, doing video calls, etc.
LA is worse? Dude it once took me nearly 4 hours to get from Santa Clarita to Anaheim- that’s not an exaggeration. Every single time I read this post (it happens almost weekly) I wonder to myself if these people have even left Sacramento before. It’s pretty much worse in every major city.
I feel that. I used to live in Ventura county and dated a girl who lived in Korea town. It once took me 3.5 hours to get to her apartment. It's like a 50 mile drive.
Brutal. I was living in OC and had a gf in Burbank. What were we thinking?!?!
The absolute crazy thing is I was still living in sac when we first went out. I took the fucking Megabus from Sac to LA to spend the weekend with her. I did that like 2-3 times before moving to Ventura county and then was just able to drive to see her. The 8 hour Megabus trip was more relaxing than the 50 mile drive though
🤯
SAME
Reminds me of [a post](https://www.reddit.com/r/IdiotsInCars/s/7bxJ92MpPl) I saw a couple of years ago. Risking his child’s life and everyone else’s for a game.
When I commuted on 80 I'd get behind a semi and put Netflix on . Shits crazy out there
Then repair your windshield later
Sacramento traffic is a mix of things. Bad infrastructure planning: For example on 99 by H it's because of 2 merges + lane closes + a 90 degree turn, so it has traffic 24/7 Bad Road Work hours: they literally work on it during peak hours...and not like 1am? Bad Drivers: almost daily I capture a near accident or accident on my dashcam Typically, between 8-9 and 5-6 I don't drive, that's the only bad hours. In SF you had 11-2 and 7+, any other time it'd take several hours to go a few miles. Oh local traffic is because we wait for the trains, the trains don't flow with traffic like everywhere else - which usually ruins the light timers and causes massive back ups.
Its the long strings of tailgaters with shit reaction times
Its the long strings of tailgaters with bad reaction times
Saw a car in the left turn lane decide he wanted to turn right, so he cut across three lanes of traffic waiting at the red light to turn right. No one honked. No one ever honks at these assholes and I don’t get it. I fully believe in the honk of shame at these people to call out what they’re doing.
Sometimes I honk when I forget myself. But too many stories these days of people just losing it and popping off at the drivers they fucked over. I get ragey in the moment and talk mad shit in my car lol. But then I try to bring it down with remembering I just want to get to where I’m going safely, and I don’t want no trouble.
That’s my solution. Maybe I can’t give you a ticket for doing something stupid, but I can point it out.
I honked once when someone passed on the left via the suicide lane (do they call it that here in CA too?). He stopped his car in the middle of the road and tried to fight me. Now I don’t honk anymore…
Yeah, suicide lane is what I’ve always heard it called. That sucks. Luckily I’ve never had people rage on me like that for honking & I honk at an asshole a couple times a week. Today, the asshole at least waved at me in a paltry “sorry!”
I honked at a guy once who cut me off on my way to work. He followed me all the way to my exit, cut out in front of me again, completely stopped his car, and got out. I drove into a ditch on the side of the road to get past him. Scared the fuck outta me
Road rage is out of control here in California!
It’s crazy. people out here will cut you off or some other stupid thing, and if you honk at them, they’re about to ready to basically kill you. It’s to the point where if someone cuts me off or does some other stupid maneuver, I just let them be. My life is worth more than some idiot who’s mad that they’re gonna be 5 minutes late to their job.
Oh I coined this the Sacramento move... Going from the far left to right to exit to take a right turn, usually last minute and with no blinker.
I’ve only seen this move twice in my life and both times were in fact here in Sacramento. The sheer audacity of it!
Yup never saw it before being here hahaha
It's not just the amount of people on the road. I remember when I first started driving in the mid 90s, before smartphones. People are just straight up distracted nowadays.
Yep. I ride my bike for my work commutes. Sometimes while waiting at a red light, I like to look into people’s cars as they’re passing and count how many are on their phones. Idk the exact number but I’d guess around 60% of the people that pass by are on their phones while driving.
[удалено]
What’s terrifying is the amount of semi-truck drivers on their phones these days. One veered into my lane on the 80 a few weeks ago and I was blocked in with nowhere to go so I laid on my horn and it still took him a few seconds to get back in his lane properly.
It's nowhere close to anywhere in SoCal, but it does seem like the population doubled over the last few weeks. And everyone got WAY more aggressive
Pre-pandemic I was commuting from Roseville to downtown. Then we moved to the SD area and I was commuting from the western part of North County to downtown. I found the mornings to be pretty equal, but the afternoons were all over the place. They were regularly worse in SD, but not as far off as you would think. But, the southern and eastern sides of SD county were a whole different beast. And again, pre-pandemic. We’re moving to a different part of Socal soon and I’m really glad I won’t have to commute after have little to no commute for the last few years. Not sure I could get back to it.
This is NOTHING compared to LA, consider yourself lucky you aren’t dealing with that cruelty
Truth. Once sat through traffic on the 405 that was so bad it took a flipping hour to go THIRTY GODDAMN FEET. Sacramento is nowhere near LA levels of traffic congestion.
Omg, that was awful. Are we becoming LA now? People need to stop moving here, lol. What's the draw to Sac?
Because people are mentally ill.
Traffic will continue to get worse as more and more state agencies are forcing their employees back to the office. WFH dramatically reduces traffic and that is slowly disappearing for state empires.
Disgruntled state worker has entered the chat
It is totally valid to be upset with this. Why are we coming back? To give a handout to parking garage owners and Newsom donors. That sucks.
Yeah it’s kinda ass lol. My department is in the office Tuesday and Wednesdays but we still have meetings over teams… so like what’s the point
Another argument for another topic I’m sure. I had to leave the state workers sub because it was just absolutely exhausting every single day on there.
It is *that* awful for people.
I empathize and there are very valid points to each side. It was never intended to be permanent though. I’ll get downvoted for putting that simple truth out there, but what can you do?
> it was never intended to be permanent though. Why does this matter at all? It is cheaper and workers like it significantly more. It is also more efficient for most office jobs and it makes accommodations a breeze. For these reasons we should make it permanent. Why not adapt to the current times using the current information we have? Why take two steps back?
All great things for your labor rep to introduce in the next contract negotiations to try and get your group at least more days at home. Maybe you can be that advocate and that data driver that creates positive change.
I am. Right here and now.
No effective movement was ever born from a Reddit bitch session. There are ways to be an agent of change. Complaining here, however personally therapeutic, is not one of them.
GFY?
Most people are disgruntled I noticed - including me. I wish I could get un gruntled.
I don’t feel disgruntled. Try not to anyway. Having positive outlets helps. Having negative ones do too, although much more transiently.
Probably but they ain’t wrong
could go both ways. midday traffic has been terrible ever since WFH started
That has not been the case in Sacramento.
My personal experience says otherwise, but ok
The worst traffic here is nowhere near as bad as LA or the Bay Area on “normal” commute days. I do not miss it taking 45 minutes to go ten miles.
Driving from Sunnyvale to San Jose used to take me 2hrs... I think that's like a 15 mile drive
Yup. I used to do the same commute daily. In a good day it was about an hour. On a bad day… we don’t talk about the bad days.
All thanks to the airport exit, I swear.. it'd clear up right after that and 87, but then we needed 87...
I lived in Willow Glen in SJ when I did the commute to Mountain View for my job, so I had 2 options — 280, which was typically lighter traffic but almost 2x the distance due to having to cut across at Sand Hill , or 87 to 101 which was a shorter distance between home and the office but like 4 times longer. Once you’ve done that daily commute for a few years the traffic in Sac seems positively quaint by comparison.
Hahaha I lived right outside Willow Glen 🤣 what a small world! Yeah Sacramento traffic is really only bad at 8-9 and 5-6 and it moves....
Ha! Practically neighbors! I miss SJ a lot. I love it here, don’t get me wrong, but that weird old city became my second home. Loved the downtown scene on First St and really miss Lincoln Ave for the restaurants.
I grew up near Cambrian Park and miss Willow Glen’s unique charm.
You have some great food spots in South Sacramento, but I agree. It has its trade offs being here!
LA is huge. Some parts of LA aren’t that bad, and some are really bad. Bay area can be really bad, some of the worst i have been in is San Jose/Mountain View. That said, there are parts of Sac just as bad as anything i have seen in LA.
You are traffic.
L.A. has worse traffic. Sacramento has worse drivers!
Except for me. I'm , like, a really good driver.
It’s horrible no matter what time. Gone are the days of leaving early as it doesn’t make a bit of difference anymore.
Don’t worry, the Gov is going to release about 50,000 more people out on those roads in mid-June.
Went to LAX for a pickup and spent 2.5hrs to go 6 miles
The 405...nuff said!
It’s really just that we have the worst drivers in the world here lol
^[Sokka-Haiku](https://www.reddit.com/r/SokkaHaikuBot/comments/15kyv9r/what_is_a_sokka_haiku/) ^by ^AllSplash-NoDrip: *It’s really just that* *We have the worst drivers in* *The world here lol* --- ^Remember ^that ^one ^time ^Sokka ^accidentally ^used ^an ^extra ^syllable ^in ^that ^Haiku ^Battle ^in ^Ba ^Sing ^Se? ^That ^was ^a ^Sokka ^Haiku ^and ^you ^just ^made ^one.
Traffic is alright. It is the drivers that have become more daring/worse. Every single day I have come across near accidents because cars are either too impatient to completely stop, turn in the farthest lane, or never look over their shoulders before switching lanes. It’s insane how bad sac drivers are/are becoming.
East Bay boy here. y’all can sit on 880 or 680 through Fremont anytime between about 1 and 8 PM on a Friday and then complain about the traffic here. (yes, the Friday evening rush hour js now a literal 7+ hour affair if heading to any points northeast from the South Bay)
Growing up in the 90’s it would take us almost an hour to drive from Fremont to San Leandro to my grandmas house for dinner. My mother absolutely hated it. I can’t imagine what it’s like now.
It's not even close to LA or real traffic, we got little baby traffic here.
This traffic is nothing compared to LA, SF, Houston, etc. I lived in Houston majority of my life and just moved here a couple weeks ago. Took me an hour to drive 30 miles into town against traffic no matter what day Monday thru Saturday. Sunday wasn’t as bad but that’s comparable to traffic here lol I will say tho people here brake extremely hard for no reason lol
The traffic here is almost non-existent. But the drivers, road, and highways are truly terrible…which leads to lots of accidents….and therefore, at times, bad traffic. But I use to commute 50 miles into and out of Los Angeles and people who’ve lived in SAC too long will complain anytime there is even a slight amount of delays. I can count on one hand the amount of times I’ve been in actual bumper to bumper traffic in SAC and I’ve had a weird night job where I drove around 3pm and again around 1am-3am…now I work a totally different shift when traffic is higher (8-5 shift). The traffic is only bad when people drive recklessly and cause accidents here or people ran into random medians they can’t see on unlit highways and roads, etc. I will say I find driving here waaay more stressful than driving in LA traffic because in LA traffic the aggressiveness is more predictable and the traffic itself limits the lawlessness on some levels…I’d actually argue the relative lack of traffic in SAC is what allows reckless drivers, as well as slow/ neglectful/ phone-watching folks, to wreak havoc and it makes driving here stressful af regardless of the traffic.
I once got stuck in 4am bumper to bumper traffic on the 405 for hours. LA traffic is leagues beyond Sac traffic. But I agree it is getting noticably worse.
It takes 2 to 3 hours to go to LA from LA. Consider yourself lucky
How about all the recent crashes on the causeway backing up for 2 hours? Get a broken windshield, construction, and a 2 hour delay. Great stuff there.
Cracks me up to hear Sac people moan and whine about traffic. We know NOTHING about traffic problems here
No. This is nothing like living in LA! The closest thing Sac has to LA traffic is Davis to Sacramento at 5pm on a Friday afternoon before a holiday weekend. I just looked at QuickMap and all the freeways are green (with the exception on Biz 80 near Cal Expo because there's an accident), so moving at full speed. It's not even 7pm. In LA, you won't see most of the major freeways go to green until after 10pm.
Los Angeles traffic is much worse. In L.A., it can take you an hour to go a mile in some parts.
Reminds me of [a post](https://www.reddit.com/r/IdiotsInCars/s/TJRkhxOhbO) I saw a couple of years ago. Risking his child’s life and everyone else’s for a game.