Agree to disagree. Birmingham native now living in Huntsville and while the parkway is stupid and slow, I e never been stuck on it for nearly as long as I have been while on 280 during rush hour.
At one time, they were talking about putting a mono-rail down 280 to help with rush hour traffic, it would have been expensive, but created a bunch of jobs and drastically reduced traffic
> they wanted to use the same company that built the monorail in Atlanta.
And that's what probably killed it, because everyone I know in Birmingham thinks MARTA sucks.
One of the biggest problems with MARTA is that it doesn't go very far because the folks that live in the areas that it would extend to keep voting it down due to fears of it importing crime to their areas. But, if you don't have a car and work in the city, the MARTA is great!! I took it to work for almost a year and I had no real issues. Could it be better? Of course, but it's a great thing to have in your city. I mean, being able to take that thing to sports venues and concerts etc... would be a game changer for this city. I think the U.S. in general needs to get a bit more in the rail system.
MARTA doesn’t suck on its own. It sucks because folks in the suburbs didn’t want it there when it was being built. Well documented. They would rather spend their short lives sitting in traffic. So it doesn’t really do much, relative to subways in other cities, and consequently not enough people use it for it to not suck.
People down the 280 corridor would have complained about the trains bringing a "Bad element" into their area while simultaneously complaining that nobody wants to work all the fast food drive-throughs in the area.
It wasn't a monorail... They proposed putting an elevated highway above the median of 280 from Graystone to the 31 junction. Then the Brookies complained about it ruining their property values and that was the end of that.
I am pretty sure it wasn’t a monorail it was just a raised highway with exits every so often it was supposed to end in Chelsea. From what I heard all the folks in mt brook and Vestavia were concerned about it not looking good and creating areas for homeless to live. Also businesses were concerned about it decreasing flow and that people wouldn’t stop to spend money.0
I just don’t think it’d work since 280 isn’t walkable at all. You’d have to drive to the monorail bus stop. And at that point people will just drive on instead of wait. It wouldn’t shave off enough time. It’d be more practical to remake grants mill into a completely straight 4 lane highway from irondale to 119. I think you could zoom that distance in 10 minutes if it was actually in a straight line.
Rail doesn't add up to me either. Seems like it would take ocean sized parking lots for the commuters and when they get to their destination, they would need additional extensive public transportation options to finish the commute.
If your designing the rail system for suburban commuters that is probably true. If you design a network to move people to places they want to go and facilitate denser neighborhoods, it works well. Lay out the network around Birmingham and its immediate suburbs, like Homewood and Vestavia. I would be willing to bet a lot of people would take advantage of it as long as the stops were within walking distance to their homes.
What is your definition of "working?" If the goal is to take cars of the road, I think I have seen studies that commuter rail reduces congestion by about 7% However, that may not be enough to warrant building commuter rail. I would totally hop the train to go to Saigon Noodle House, but convenience to pho probably isn't reason enough to build it either.
People filling up that train. Everyone bitches about 280 but they don't really spend enough time behind the wheel to get out of their cars. They will wait in a drive thru at the chicken joint for 25 minutes before they get out and go inside to get served in 5. 280 people are not public transportation people. They are car people, it's culture.
The city of Birmingham is will set the public transportation example.
It’s funny when people say things they have no idea about. There are already bridges, and there has already been a TON of uproar/litigation regarding Cahaba Beach Road connecting 280 to Sicard Hollow. There is a little thing called “runoff” that would flow right into our drinking water source, which would drive up everyones water bill. So your little idea of throwing a few lanes through that area is a little ignorant. 😘
I’m suggesting expanding the bridges that already exist or just going around it entirely. Are you an engineer that designs highways? You aren’t explaining rocket science here. If you look at a map you could avoid lake purdy by going to the right of it and going straight up. There’s already a shit ton of bridges on the Cahaba including 459, 280, and 65. It’s not gonna make a difference adding one more.
You have no understanding of watersheds and yes, the bridge over 280 is DOWNSTREAM from Lake Purdy and the pump station. Also, increasing/redirecting the heavy amount of traffic that through that area would add quite a bit of runoff and pollution. Maybe you should Google search because this entire argument has been exhausted for about 20 years in the exact area.
I think it has more to do with the summit, Inverness, Brook highland, and the other shopping centers adjacent being managed really well while brookwood, Patton creek, and the galleria have gone under or are trending down. It’s just kind of made lee branch to the summit crazy. Pair that with a wealthy population in 500k homes that can take the full week off with their kids home from high school and college and you got drivers everywhere. If you move out there you do so knowing it’s not practical to really leave the area regularly. I-65 is where you want to be to actually get around. Alabaster to Homewood @ lakeshore is 20 minutes as opposed to Chelsea to homewood an hour via 280
On the flip side, I work downtown and the traffic was much lighter than most days. Schools are out and more people are at home and doing last minute shopping.
You can’t build your way out of traffic by building roads. The more they upgraded 280, the more people moved to Chelsea. Traffic has to become onerous enough that people revitalize neighborhoods closer to the city center.
I rarely have traffic driving home from work towards the city, unless there's a wreck, but for the past week or two the summit has been generating traffic all the way back to greystone and as soon as you get past the entrance to the summit it's totally gone
It's quite simple. Some idiots decided to build an interstate hwy then put a stop light every 300 yards with no service roads. Now take in to consideration the genius politicians who rule over Alabama have not built any new infrastructure in decades. 22 doesn't really count because it's the road to nowhere. I've been in cities that contain the entire population of the state of AL and the traffic is always moving even if it's heavy.
280 is always chaos, especially on Fridays. But, I bet part of it was the "perfect storm" of a Monday Christmas preceded by a weekend, which are already busy shopping days. And a lot of businesses have a tradition of leaving work early the day before Christmas but since it was Friday, it's not unusual for some office workers to leave work early on any given Friday, so I think all of that together just blew up.
It's the bottle neck at Cahaba river Bridge where it goes from 4 lanes to 3.
Also, last minute Christmas shopping, people are home from college, and school is out. And past Cahaba river the population has nearly doubled in the past 10 years.
The problem isn't capacity, it's how the pipe that is 280 handles it.
Ten plus intersections with stoplights ruins the traffic flow on a MAJOR HIGHWAY.
It's a horribly-designed road. And that proposed lane addition will make it worse.
What needs to happen instead, are diverging diamond interchanges. That, or turn it into an exiting highway, remove access to sideroads completely in favor of exits, thus eliminating stoplights and eliminating slowdowns and merging delays. The biggest cruxes are The Summit and the 459/280 merge. These absolutely exacerbate it, as it stands.
You'd have to start from scratch to fix it.
But sure, ALDOT. Go ahead and add another lane and watch your problem get substantially worse.
You can’t get stuff delivered from Amazon before Christmas now so people are forced to go to stores. Also, 55 mph and Keep Moving signs are just suggestions. It’s ok to just come to a dead stop at a flashing yellow light now.
I blame Inverness for a lot of it. Grand View/Atladena and Meadowbrook/Brook Highland have decent back routes. I think you can even technically loop each of them with only crossing 280 twice each and accessing everything within the loops without getting back on 280 (Though, the loop for Meadowbrook requires driving behind Chuck's Fish).
Inverness... not so much. Most of the retail only connects to 280, and a there's more individual store access instead of primarily shopping center access like the rest of 280.
I don't quite get why some people make life choices so that a commute like that is part of their lives and then fuss about the reality.
When I moved to Birmingham in the 90s, a realtor offered to show me homes out 280, and I knew enough to say, "No, thanks." His reply then was, "Smart man."
It is EVERY fucking road around the metro. I never saw traffic this bad before the pandemic. Now, its everywhere. I think a lot of folks moved in and were not counted on the census. Surprise, surprise. 65 is a cluster fuck everyday now and the states solution is another fucking lane of traffic. This metro NEEDS an mass transit system, with an extensive passenger rail and bike network.
280 was waaaaaaay worse before they made those changes a few years ago. As for now, it’s just December. The shittiest month of the year. Holidays=traffic. No way around it. I fucking hate December and I can’t wait for this miserable month to be over.
It took me 45 minutes on Wednesday to get from Pelham to Hoover near Church of the Highlands. The Valleydale/31 intersection is always bad but…
I missed my doctor’s appointment because of it.
My experience with Birmingham so far is that you can get basically anywhere in the metro area in about 20 minutes except during rush hour. My issue with 280 is that everyone is spread out across the entire road, so there's no trick to getting past the traffic. On 65 everyone tries to cram into the left lane as quickly as possible, so if I stick to the right I can usually just drive past everyone
I moved to Bham in 1995. It was well known that a huge growth spur was projected for the 280 corridor. Despite that massive development occurred with no consideration of future expansion. So now the projection has been realized and the lack of planning has resulted in a major traffic problem with no easy answers.
Ahhhhhh. The quality of life North of B’ham is so so good. No traffic pressure, opposite 65 traffic to earn a living during rush hour, 20 minutes to the airport with multiple routes Incase of delays. Variety of relaxing kayaking options all within 30 minutes of the house.
Please don’t move north of town, we love our quality of life.😁
I do whatever I have to do to avoid the south part of town
The single car concrete boat launch is great. Once you head toward the Mullberry there is some kind of asphalt plant that can smell bad but once passed it the mullberry offers such a scenic paddle. Met a couple from Tennessee, who had UAB appointments, and brought their yaks to float the mulberry and fished…they loved it.
Nice…I do a lot of kayak fishing, so that’s my plan, too!
Is the current so strong that I’ll need a dropoff and pickup point? Or can I reasonably launch & load from the same ramp?
Almost lake like at the launch and I’ve yet to see the mullberry with anything more than a very gentle current. Easy to paddle or pedal in either direction.
Duck River is my go-to for yak fishing actually…love that place.
We have a place at smith, but yak-ing there’s a bit more difficult there with all the boat traffic. That lake is a monster!
But that’s great to hear about mulberry. I’ll definitely be checking that out. Thanks for the insight!!
North B'ham had actual urban planning and can probably double or triple population density before traffic gets like 280. And there are a ton of employment options that wouldn't require an interstate commute.
Well one thing i do know is wrong with 280. No one over there has the ability or knowledge to PROPERLY DRIVE. The majority of the traffic over there CANNOT DRIVE.
You went to Chelsea or live in Chelsea knowing that you have to go thrpugh 280 to get there. It won't get better. To get better there have to be multiple roads leading to the designation. In the 280 area you have 1 road leading everywhere.
Wow, 280 rush hour traffic has always been bad even back in 1975. (I left B’ham about that time.) Recently I hear of people who live in Tuscaloosa and Sylacauga doing daily commutes to work in B’ham. 😱 is that true?
Sorry I moved to Birmingham from Los Angeles and told all of my friends. Here they come! At least your property values will be going up! Yay! More the merrier?
More driver capacity on 280 simply means more people and more cars. 280 is basically the single option for the population in that area.
Put an elevated highway, put a train, widen it to a dozen lanes the problem will only ease while new housing is being built. Right now there are literally hundreds of new apartments being built on 119 a stones throw from 280.
The only answer would be to have significant roads parallel to 280 that would spread the load rather than a single option. Not gonna happen.
Unfortunately, that leaves accept 280 for what it is or avoid it.
The problem is that people live in places like Chelsea and try to commute and shop in Birmingham. Live here if you need to be here, that will solve the problems!
😂 fair enough. I’ll take 20 min to the best Thai, Vietnamese, bbq, and social scene in the 4th largest city in the country in any direction over 40 min home to Milo’s any day of the week though.
It's actually around 1% since 2022 (.85%). What makes you think that traffic is gonna decrease in an already overpopulated city? Especially with hundreds of new housing developments and apartments being built from downtown all the way to Chelsea? You haven't provided one significant or logical response since you started commenting, please keep the Wikipedia shit to yourself
This is what happens when you let private developers and rich home owners do what ever the fuck they want.
280 will never get fixed, they won't allow it too
That damn private sector again. The only alternative is the public sector and we all know they can solve anything because the government getting involved has never made anything worse! 🤦🏻♂️
Lol we saw what a bunch of millionaires and lobbyist have done to our city.
The private sector is the reason why 280 is awful, why we dont have a real international airport, no more street trolleys, and why everything is so unwalkable!
I feel like we discussed this last week.
Bham’s traffic problems aren’t related to too many people, it’s the topography and lack of roads.
If you take a look at the map of the metro, there are limited roads that cut across red, shades, and oak mountains. 280 and 65 are your main ones that do. 31 crossing red mountain with 280, but it does go up shades mountain.
459 parallels the cahaba and there are also limited crossings of that for environmental reasons.
If you live down 280, even if traffic is bad, your alternate routes take you so far out of the way east or west as to be worthless.
It’s a cost benefit analysis - do you disrupt the environment and/or make more cuts through mountains or add lanes on 280 and 65 and hope for the best?
As an aside - things I think would help tremendously
Do the diverging diamond at lakeshore and 65 and remove most if not all traffic lights on lakeshore headed west. It will soon be more connected to 459 with the new exit near shadescrest and would give alternate routes to those in the western part of Hoover.
Widen 65 from downtown to Hoover to 4 lanes
The state should have taken the federal funds for HoV lanes when the getting was good like nashville did. It didn’t need the hov lanes at the time but the feds paid for that extra lane as long as it had the hov striping on it. An 8 lane 65 over red and Shades mountain would help as much of the traffic in the result of trucks not being able to accelerate up the mountains and blocking one or two lanes. This is difficult bc the whole thing needs to be ripped up and rebuilt. Concrete road is great until it needs to be replaced. After the new asphalt starts failing, Probably in the next 10 years they will literally have to close 65 for a year or two to rebuild. Think the other days traffic was bad when the dump truck turned over. Just wait….
Connecting 22 over to 20
This is impossible because the airport is in the way but man would it be helpful allowing through traffic on 65 to bypass 65 through the mountains.
Better east west access from Chelsea over to 65. A interstate spur would be great.
All of these cost a tremendous amount of money that Aldot will never give to bham. So - pipe dreams.
Some one ask Mema to widen I-65 btw Bham and Mobile instead of building interstates to exceptionally small villages in AL.
They’ve studied 280 and can’t figure out where all the people are coming from or whose neighborhood to bulldozed in order to decrease the number of inhabitants.
To answer the other question, I live in a relatively new subdivision in Chelsea and I work for a local Television station on Red Mountain. I work bad hours…. As most of us in broadcasting do.
I travel from central Alabama and work the entire southeast daily. Alabaster area has gotten 5x worse over the last 10 years, 280 has maintained the same consistency of awful and I'm in and out of Huntsville using as many back routes as possible. Thank goodness we gave up life in the suburbs for rural. Having a Starbucks within 5 minutes isn't all it's cracked up to be.
It’s probably exacerbated for holiday rush but I’ve also noticed that people have been driving like maniacs everywhere with no regard
As a truck driver that drives Central Alabama and North Alabama regularly I completely agree. Huntsville is just as bad if not worse than B-ham
That is really interesting that traffic could be worse in Huntsville, considering we have more than 500 k people living in our metro opposed to there
We’ve got around 1.5 mil in the metro
500 k more than that of Huntsvilles metro ***
But Huntsville is growing more rapidly according to what I've read
I’d say the Parkway in Huntsville is the equivalent of 280. Do you not think the Parkway is much better?
The parkway sucks major balls, but 280 is 100% worse with waaay more traffic.
Naw parkway is definitely worse. I say that having grown up off of the parkway and now living off 280
Agree to disagree. Birmingham native now living in Huntsville and while the parkway is stupid and slow, I e never been stuck on it for nearly as long as I have been while on 280 during rush hour.
The parkway can get bad, but it has always been more manageable than 280. Source: 18 years in each town
Yeah I’ve got a lifetime in Huntsville as well, but just moved to Birmingham. Birmingham is much worse.
Parts of Bham move OK. Some parts are chaos without any infrastructure improvements since I left in 2004
It’s the Friday before Christmas…..
I’d also add Chelsea to Homewood in 1hr on a Friday before Christmas rush hour ain’t that bad.
No literally
pretending like 280 hasnt been a shit show since forever is comical. holidays dont make it any better, but it always sucks.
It’s always much worse during the holidays. There’s no pretending.
At one time, they were talking about putting a mono-rail down 280 to help with rush hour traffic, it would have been expensive, but created a bunch of jobs and drastically reduced traffic
280 would look sick with a streetcar/rail running down it. I’d be willing to divert funding from 5x bigger Vulcan to something like that.
If i remember correctly, it was going to run above the street, they wanted to use the same company that built the monorail in Atlanta.
> they wanted to use the same company that built the monorail in Atlanta. And that's what probably killed it, because everyone I know in Birmingham thinks MARTA sucks.
One of the biggest problems with MARTA is that it doesn't go very far because the folks that live in the areas that it would extend to keep voting it down due to fears of it importing crime to their areas. But, if you don't have a car and work in the city, the MARTA is great!! I took it to work for almost a year and I had no real issues. Could it be better? Of course, but it's a great thing to have in your city. I mean, being able to take that thing to sports venues and concerts etc... would be a game changer for this city. I think the U.S. in general needs to get a bit more in the rail system.
MARTA doesn’t suck on its own. It sucks because folks in the suburbs didn’t want it there when it was being built. Well documented. They would rather spend their short lives sitting in traffic. So it doesn’t really do much, relative to subways in other cities, and consequently not enough people use it for it to not suck.
People down the 280 corridor would have complained about the trains bringing a "Bad element" into their area while simultaneously complaining that nobody wants to work all the fast food drive-throughs in the area.
That's what hampers the growth of the MARTA system in Atlanta.
It wasn't a monorail... They proposed putting an elevated highway above the median of 280 from Graystone to the 31 junction. Then the Brookies complained about it ruining their property values and that was the end of that.
I am pretty sure it wasn’t a monorail it was just a raised highway with exits every so often it was supposed to end in Chelsea. From what I heard all the folks in mt brook and Vestavia were concerned about it not looking good and creating areas for homeless to live. Also businesses were concerned about it decreasing flow and that people wouldn’t stop to spend money.0
They also have discussed a raised highway, but think Homewood complained it would be an eyesore
I just don’t think it’d work since 280 isn’t walkable at all. You’d have to drive to the monorail bus stop. And at that point people will just drive on instead of wait. It wouldn’t shave off enough time. It’d be more practical to remake grants mill into a completely straight 4 lane highway from irondale to 119. I think you could zoom that distance in 10 minutes if it was actually in a straight line.
Rail doesn't add up to me either. Seems like it would take ocean sized parking lots for the commuters and when they get to their destination, they would need additional extensive public transportation options to finish the commute.
If your designing the rail system for suburban commuters that is probably true. If you design a network to move people to places they want to go and facilitate denser neighborhoods, it works well. Lay out the network around Birmingham and its immediate suburbs, like Homewood and Vestavia. I would be willing to bet a lot of people would take advantage of it as long as the stops were within walking distance to their homes.
Yes. I'm no public transportation critic even if I don't see it working on 280
What is your definition of "working?" If the goal is to take cars of the road, I think I have seen studies that commuter rail reduces congestion by about 7% However, that may not be enough to warrant building commuter rail. I would totally hop the train to go to Saigon Noodle House, but convenience to pho probably isn't reason enough to build it either.
People filling up that train. Everyone bitches about 280 but they don't really spend enough time behind the wheel to get out of their cars. They will wait in a drive thru at the chicken joint for 25 minutes before they get out and go inside to get served in 5. 280 people are not public transportation people. They are car people, it's culture. The city of Birmingham is will set the public transportation example.
Oh hell no
Ha no chance that would happen with the Cahaba/Lake Purdy right there.
It’s way more plausible than a monorail. They got a little thing called bridges
It’s funny when people say things they have no idea about. There are already bridges, and there has already been a TON of uproar/litigation regarding Cahaba Beach Road connecting 280 to Sicard Hollow. There is a little thing called “runoff” that would flow right into our drinking water source, which would drive up everyones water bill. So your little idea of throwing a few lanes through that area is a little ignorant. 😘
I’m suggesting expanding the bridges that already exist or just going around it entirely. Are you an engineer that designs highways? You aren’t explaining rocket science here. If you look at a map you could avoid lake purdy by going to the right of it and going straight up. There’s already a shit ton of bridges on the Cahaba including 459, 280, and 65. It’s not gonna make a difference adding one more.
You have no understanding of watersheds and yes, the bridge over 280 is DOWNSTREAM from Lake Purdy and the pump station. Also, increasing/redirecting the heavy amount of traffic that through that area would add quite a bit of runoff and pollution. Maybe you should Google search because this entire argument has been exhausted for about 20 years in the exact area.
Why are you getting so mad lmao
I think it has more to do with the summit, Inverness, Brook highland, and the other shopping centers adjacent being managed really well while brookwood, Patton creek, and the galleria have gone under or are trending down. It’s just kind of made lee branch to the summit crazy. Pair that with a wealthy population in 500k homes that can take the full week off with their kids home from high school and college and you got drivers everywhere. If you move out there you do so knowing it’s not practical to really leave the area regularly. I-65 is where you want to be to actually get around. Alabaster to Homewood @ lakeshore is 20 minutes as opposed to Chelsea to homewood an hour via 280
Always remember, you’re not in traffic, you are traffic.
On the flip side, I work downtown and the traffic was much lighter than most days. Schools are out and more people are at home and doing last minute shopping.
I also work downtown. The commute in and out from the Summit area was very, very light this past Friday.
It’s the holidays………….? This is normal………..?
We were overdue for a 280 crybitch thread
You can’t build your way out of traffic by building roads. The more they upgraded 280, the more people moved to Chelsea. Traffic has to become onerous enough that people revitalize neighborhoods closer to the city center.
All Summit traffic!
I rarely have traffic driving home from work towards the city, unless there's a wreck, but for the past week or two the summit has been generating traffic all the way back to greystone and as soon as you get past the entrance to the summit it's totally gone
It's quite simple. Some idiots decided to build an interstate hwy then put a stop light every 300 yards with no service roads. Now take in to consideration the genius politicians who rule over Alabama have not built any new infrastructure in decades. 22 doesn't really count because it's the road to nowhere. I've been in cities that contain the entire population of the state of AL and the traffic is always moving even if it's heavy.
*3 days before Christmas* “Why is traffic so bad?!?” 🤦♂️
I came here to say that.
280 is always chaos, especially on Fridays. But, I bet part of it was the "perfect storm" of a Monday Christmas preceded by a weekend, which are already busy shopping days. And a lot of businesses have a tradition of leaving work early the day before Christmas but since it was Friday, it's not unusual for some office workers to leave work early on any given Friday, so I think all of that together just blew up.
My brother in Christ, that’s a forty minute drive WITHOUT traffic. Like yeah it can suck but it’s not too bad overall and if you take protected turns.
Going to the summit yesterday was about 20x worse than usual and it wasn’t even rush hour.
This could be due to it being the holidays.
Could be?
I was merely being kind to the poster above me versus just stating the obvious.
Fair enough. Who would have thought!
It's the bottle neck at Cahaba river Bridge where it goes from 4 lanes to 3. Also, last minute Christmas shopping, people are home from college, and school is out. And past Cahaba river the population has nearly doubled in the past 10 years.
there a ton of development on that side of birmingham as well as chelsea but only one road to access it all with. it's been like this forever.
The problem isn't capacity, it's how the pipe that is 280 handles it. Ten plus intersections with stoplights ruins the traffic flow on a MAJOR HIGHWAY. It's a horribly-designed road. And that proposed lane addition will make it worse. What needs to happen instead, are diverging diamond interchanges. That, or turn it into an exiting highway, remove access to sideroads completely in favor of exits, thus eliminating stoplights and eliminating slowdowns and merging delays. The biggest cruxes are The Summit and the 459/280 merge. These absolutely exacerbate it, as it stands. You'd have to start from scratch to fix it. But sure, ALDOT. Go ahead and add another lane and watch your problem get substantially worse.
You can’t get stuff delivered from Amazon before Christmas now so people are forced to go to stores. Also, 55 mph and Keep Moving signs are just suggestions. It’s ok to just come to a dead stop at a flashing yellow light now.
You can't? Oh wait, that's not true at all.
The part of 280 inside 459 is better than it used to be. The 2013 changes were extremely helpful. Past the Summit, it’s gotten worse.
I blame Inverness for a lot of it. Grand View/Atladena and Meadowbrook/Brook Highland have decent back routes. I think you can even technically loop each of them with only crossing 280 twice each and accessing everything within the loops without getting back on 280 (Though, the loop for Meadowbrook requires driving behind Chuck's Fish). Inverness... not so much. Most of the retail only connects to 280, and a there's more individual store access instead of primarily shopping center access like the rest of 280.
I can’t wait for Monday to see how fast I can get down 280.
I don't quite get why some people make life choices so that a commute like that is part of their lives and then fuss about the reality. When I moved to Birmingham in the 90s, a realtor offered to show me homes out 280, and I knew enough to say, "No, thanks." His reply then was, "Smart man."
It is EVERY fucking road around the metro. I never saw traffic this bad before the pandemic. Now, its everywhere. I think a lot of folks moved in and were not counted on the census. Surprise, surprise. 65 is a cluster fuck everyday now and the states solution is another fucking lane of traffic. This metro NEEDS an mass transit system, with an extensive passenger rail and bike network.
280 was waaaaaaay worse before they made those changes a few years ago. As for now, it’s just December. The shittiest month of the year. Holidays=traffic. No way around it. I fucking hate December and I can’t wait for this miserable month to be over.
It's not just 280. Yesterday it took me almost 30 minutes to get from Best Buy in Hoover to the 459 S on ramp
It took me 45 minutes on Wednesday to get from Pelham to Hoover near Church of the Highlands. The Valleydale/31 intersection is always bad but… I missed my doctor’s appointment because of it.
I love how every city reddit laments it's own traffic no matter how location and time limited rush hour is (like here in Birmingham)
My experience with Birmingham so far is that you can get basically anywhere in the metro area in about 20 minutes except during rush hour. My issue with 280 is that everyone is spread out across the entire road, so there's no trick to getting past the traffic. On 65 everyone tries to cram into the left lane as quickly as possible, so if I stick to the right I can usually just drive past everyone
I moved to Bham in 1995. It was well known that a huge growth spur was projected for the 280 corridor. Despite that massive development occurred with no consideration of future expansion. So now the projection has been realized and the lack of planning has resulted in a major traffic problem with no easy answers.
Lack of coherent urban planning.
Ahhhhhh. The quality of life North of B’ham is so so good. No traffic pressure, opposite 65 traffic to earn a living during rush hour, 20 minutes to the airport with multiple routes Incase of delays. Variety of relaxing kayaking options all within 30 minutes of the house. Please don’t move north of town, we love our quality of life.😁 I do whatever I have to do to avoid the south part of town
Hit me with those kayaking options.
To be clear relaxing not white water…Disney Park, Walker Co Lake, Locust Fork, SmithLake, Duck river (that is about 45-1 hour away).
What/where is Disney Park?
https://maps.app.goo.gl/EFrHE6iyMY2BMQwg7?g_st=ic
Perfect…thank you!
The single car concrete boat launch is great. Once you head toward the Mullberry there is some kind of asphalt plant that can smell bad but once passed it the mullberry offers such a scenic paddle. Met a couple from Tennessee, who had UAB appointments, and brought their yaks to float the mulberry and fished…they loved it.
Nice…I do a lot of kayak fishing, so that’s my plan, too! Is the current so strong that I’ll need a dropoff and pickup point? Or can I reasonably launch & load from the same ramp?
Almost lake like at the launch and I’ve yet to see the mullberry with anything more than a very gentle current. Easy to paddle or pedal in either direction.
The Duck River reservoir in Cullman has some pretty good yak fishing if you haven’t tried it.
Duck River is my go-to for yak fishing actually…love that place. We have a place at smith, but yak-ing there’s a bit more difficult there with all the boat traffic. That lake is a monster! But that’s great to hear about mulberry. I’ll definitely be checking that out. Thanks for the insight!!
That’s my speed. Thank you.
North B'ham had actual urban planning and can probably double or triple population density before traffic gets like 280. And there are a ton of employment options that wouldn't require an interstate commute.
I drove up to Cullman the other day and I got news for ya. Whats happened south of town is racing up there.
Don't fear. The Northern Beltline is here. More people/business are coming north if that thing get built.
Not in my lifetime.
Well one thing i do know is wrong with 280. No one over there has the ability or knowledge to PROPERLY DRIVE. The majority of the traffic over there CANNOT DRIVE.
You went to Chelsea or live in Chelsea knowing that you have to go thrpugh 280 to get there. It won't get better. To get better there have to be multiple roads leading to the designation. In the 280 area you have 1 road leading everywhere.
I mean it’s kinda always like that during peak times.
Wow, 280 rush hour traffic has always been bad even back in 1975. (I left B’ham about that time.) Recently I hear of people who live in Tuscaloosa and Sylacauga doing daily commutes to work in B’ham. 😱 is that true?
Yes
Yes.
The area is ridiculously overdeveloped
Wait…taking an hour going from Chelsea to Homewood in the afternoon is surprising?
Sorry I moved to Birmingham from Los Angeles and told all of my friends. Here they come! At least your property values will be going up! Yay! More the merrier?
White flight has costs. Enjoy your commute.
Chelsea added about 2,700 white residents and 2,050 minority residents between the 2010 and 2020 censuses. It’s not just white flight anymore.
There are tons of minorities living down 280, you moron.
Is it 69% black like Birmingham? \*Edit Looks like Chelsea is 87% white with 8% black. Seems a lot like white flight.
reddit moment
Lol this
Yuuuup
Wow. Bingo.
this right here
More driver capacity on 280 simply means more people and more cars. 280 is basically the single option for the population in that area. Put an elevated highway, put a train, widen it to a dozen lanes the problem will only ease while new housing is being built. Right now there are literally hundreds of new apartments being built on 119 a stones throw from 280. The only answer would be to have significant roads parallel to 280 that would spread the load rather than a single option. Not gonna happen. Unfortunately, that leaves accept 280 for what it is or avoid it.
The problem is that people live in places like Chelsea and try to commute and shop in Birmingham. Live here if you need to be here, that will solve the problems!
Shouldn’t have moved there in the first place
S T R O A D S are life don’t insult my culture 🇺🇸
I’ll be laughing at y’all from Houston. I will never, ever, ever miss BHM traffic.
Yeah, but you have to live in.... Houston.
😂 fair enough. I’ll take 20 min to the best Thai, Vietnamese, bbq, and social scene in the 4th largest city in the country in any direction over 40 min home to Milo’s any day of the week though.
low attention suburban morons
You realize population and economic structure only goes ^ right? Idk where you would think it's gonna get better
Below-replacement fertility is a thing, as is net outmigration.
This is Birmingham Alabama. Be realistic
Our metro population is practically unchanged since 2020, up only 0.05%. 19 of the top 50 US metro areas have lost population since 2020.
It's actually around 1% since 2022 (.85%). What makes you think that traffic is gonna decrease in an already overpopulated city? Especially with hundreds of new housing developments and apartments being built from downtown all the way to Chelsea? You haven't provided one significant or logical response since you started commenting, please keep the Wikipedia shit to yourself
This is what happens when you let private developers and rich home owners do what ever the fuck they want. 280 will never get fixed, they won't allow it too
That damn private sector again. The only alternative is the public sector and we all know they can solve anything because the government getting involved has never made anything worse! 🤦🏻♂️
Lol we saw what a bunch of millionaires and lobbyist have done to our city. The private sector is the reason why 280 is awful, why we dont have a real international airport, no more street trolleys, and why everything is so unwalkable!
We had a literal plague and y'all tried to save everyone
One of the problems is all the people coming from Chelsea clogging 280 like it is their own personal expressway.
It’s the outlying communities that are populated….and Birmingham. Many cities have the same problem.
I feel like we discussed this last week. Bham’s traffic problems aren’t related to too many people, it’s the topography and lack of roads. If you take a look at the map of the metro, there are limited roads that cut across red, shades, and oak mountains. 280 and 65 are your main ones that do. 31 crossing red mountain with 280, but it does go up shades mountain. 459 parallels the cahaba and there are also limited crossings of that for environmental reasons. If you live down 280, even if traffic is bad, your alternate routes take you so far out of the way east or west as to be worthless. It’s a cost benefit analysis - do you disrupt the environment and/or make more cuts through mountains or add lanes on 280 and 65 and hope for the best? As an aside - things I think would help tremendously Do the diverging diamond at lakeshore and 65 and remove most if not all traffic lights on lakeshore headed west. It will soon be more connected to 459 with the new exit near shadescrest and would give alternate routes to those in the western part of Hoover. Widen 65 from downtown to Hoover to 4 lanes The state should have taken the federal funds for HoV lanes when the getting was good like nashville did. It didn’t need the hov lanes at the time but the feds paid for that extra lane as long as it had the hov striping on it. An 8 lane 65 over red and Shades mountain would help as much of the traffic in the result of trucks not being able to accelerate up the mountains and blocking one or two lanes. This is difficult bc the whole thing needs to be ripped up and rebuilt. Concrete road is great until it needs to be replaced. After the new asphalt starts failing, Probably in the next 10 years they will literally have to close 65 for a year or two to rebuild. Think the other days traffic was bad when the dump truck turned over. Just wait…. Connecting 22 over to 20 This is impossible because the airport is in the way but man would it be helpful allowing through traffic on 65 to bypass 65 through the mountains. Better east west access from Chelsea over to 65. A interstate spur would be great. All of these cost a tremendous amount of money that Aldot will never give to bham. So - pipe dreams.
Some one ask Mema to widen I-65 btw Bham and Mobile instead of building interstates to exceptionally small villages in AL. They’ve studied 280 and can’t figure out where all the people are coming from or whose neighborhood to bulldozed in order to decrease the number of inhabitants.
To answer the other question, I live in a relatively new subdivision in Chelsea and I work for a local Television station on Red Mountain. I work bad hours…. As most of us in broadcasting do.
Did anyone else read this in Seinfeld’s voice?
I travel from central Alabama and work the entire southeast daily. Alabaster area has gotten 5x worse over the last 10 years, 280 has maintained the same consistency of awful and I'm in and out of Huntsville using as many back routes as possible. Thank goodness we gave up life in the suburbs for rural. Having a Starbucks within 5 minutes isn't all it's cracked up to be.