Charlotte Traffic Quagmire!
I'm one of the lucky souls who works a job I love with hours I love. I don't have to get to work until around 10 or 10:30, and I usually stay at work until 6:30 or 7:00, so I generally miss Charlotte's wretched traffic scene. Today, however, I had to leave a little early, and I was stuck in the hellish nexus that is Charlotte's uptown at 5:00.
I live 6.5 miles from where I work, and I generally take Independence to Albemarle, and then take Albemarle to Sharon Amity. The stretch of Albemarle Rd. that I'm on is about a mile long, and it took me 25 minutes to reach Sharon Amity. I could have stabbed my eyes out by the time I got to my intersection. (In an effort to ease the traffic on this stretch of road, the city is cutting down some lovely old oak trees to make room for an expansion. It's a shame, because the oaks are lovely; however, I won't be able to appreciate them if this stretch of road makes me stab out my eyes, so I guess I'm divided in my opinion. Read about the oaks here.)
Unlike larger cities like New York where you can have traffic problems at any hour of the day, Charlotte's traffic clusters around the 8:00 and 5:00 rush hours; however, Charlotte also wasn't built like the larger cities to accomodate influx and outflux of traffic, so the gridlock can be maddening.
Another feature of the Charlotte traffic that's unfortunate is the maddening tendency of streets to change names. The street where I work changes names 3 times in a stretch of road that's about 1/2 mile long. There are also unfortunate intersections, such as Sharon Amity and Sharon Rd, or Queens Rd. and Queens Rd. (seriously), that can send a newcomer with nothing more than Mapquest printouts to guide them into hysterics.
My advice to conquer Charlotte has been proven through a year of living here and slowly learning to navigate the streets. I hope it helps you!
1. Carry a map. Unlike most of the rest of the civilized world, Charlotte's streets don't make sense. Really. The names change in ways that are mind-boggling, and having a map handy can help you out when Mapquest or Google Maps fails you.
2. Use uptown buildings as your guide. I've learned to figure out where I am in the city based on the Bank Of America building. As long as I can keep uptown in site, I can never get too lost. If nothing else, I'll start driving towards uptown, and I can find my way home from there.
3. Avoid venturing too far away from where you know. It's a shame, but I've learned the hard way to branch out slowly in my explorations of Charlotte. As my mental map expands, then I'll reach a little further afield. When I first moved here, I got horribly lost a few times before I learned to stick with familiar territory and slow, surely branch out.
4. Learn from a Charlotte old-time! It can be infuriating to ride with these folks, but they know the only way to get around this crazy town is with a lot of intuition. My husband will say, "I feel like we need to go more left." I'm never quite sure what he means by "more left," but he gets us to whatever sushi restaurant it is we're looking for with these kinds of directions. And after a year of living here, I find myself sometimes saying, "But isn't that church more to the right?"
