Well the fateful day has arrived. Yes, Carmageddon is upon us. What's that you say? You haven't heard about Carmageddon? Well you must not be within 100 miles of L.A. because it's all anyone will talk about around here! When I just signed into my yahoo.ca email account (that's .ca so it's Canadian!) it was actually one of the news items so I guess they're talking about it everywhere!
So, what is Carmageddon? Well, they are shutting down a 10 mile stretch of the 405 freeway this weekend and life as we know it is going to come to a screeching halt. This is a seriously momentous event which apparently NEVER happens. They are selling "I survived Carmageddon" shirts and I'm totally going to buy one because that's hilarious! The ramifications of this are expected to stretch across the entire city because all traffic will be rerouted (that's "re-rowted" not "re-rooted" as I would pronounce it with my Canuck accent) to the other roads. People are seriously not going to leave their homes all weekend. We have been invited over to our friends' house (who live down the street) on Saturday night because they are hunkering down and want some company.
Part of me is tempted to go for a drive to see what it's like. Maybe everyone will be so scared to drive that the streets will be deserted. Isn't it kind of a lovely idea? I have images of people rollerblading and skateboarding down the 405 (that's another wierd thing here - grown adults seem to skateboard. Seriously, I've seen several normal-looking 30's-ish men skateboarding.) People could set up block parties and lemonade stands and actually hang out together. Once when we went to Banff to go skiing there was a major accident on the way to the hill so all the cars were stuck for an hour or so. We all just sat there in our cars being grumpy. Well I decided to get out and build a snowman and David and I had a snowball fight and it ended up being super fun! People smiled out their car windows but no one joined us. Incidentally, David proposed to me that night so it was a pretty good day all around, even though we didn't ski much! Anyway, maybe that's what will happen this weekend. We will be forced out of our cars and into eachother's space. My inner pessimist is saying that people will probably just sit at home and watch TV. Hmm.
Needless to say, the folks here in L.A. LOVE their freeways and the 405 in particular. It bisects the city and connects the entire north end to the south. I've counted 14 lanes at one time but there might be more in some sections. The irony of it is that it is pretty much always backed up and is a giant pain in the ass. People say "405" means that you can go about 4 or 5 miles an hour most of the time. It's a big gamble because you can just take another road and know how long it will take to get to your destination or you can take the 405 and you might get there way faster or you might get stuck in a traffic jam. I was given the advice that I should always have food, water, and plenty of gas in my vehicle before getting on the 405, just in case. For real!!
David found out the other day that L.A. used to have a pretty decent public transit system of trolleys but they ripped them all out in the 40's to build the freeway system. Oops! Now the big thing is transit-oriented development and L.A. is significantly behind its sister cities of San Diego and San Francisco.
But the upside of this freeway madness is that people definitely know how to drive here and particularly how to merge. None of the hesitant mergers or oblivious drivers who don't open a spot for you to merge on a road like, say, the Whitemud!
Well I'm going to go and stock up on canned goods and drinking water now just in case the city implodes over the next 48 hours. Wish me luck!
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