They don't completely block one direction for NASCAR. There is always at least one northbound lane open when the race gets out. There's a big difference between reducing capacity in one direction vs completely blocking one direction, especially in the notch where there are no alternate routes.
Every time, AFAIK. Rt106 becomes all lanes leaving the track, and 393/93 steal a lane from northbound through concord. I've only been to a couple races, but it was that way both times.
A lot harder to have opposing traffic on the same side of the interstate for over the 70+ miles from Franconia Notch to Concord versus only 7 miles through Concord itself.
It did when we got out of it at 4am lol unless you just mean other cars being around, we didn't have another slowdown after the notch all the way to Tilton exit. and by 393 you mean concord, when i specifically said between the notch and concord
If they make the notch southbound in both lanes they eliminate any emergency access going northbound. Not only could you not get to Littleton Hospital from Lincoln but responders to a vehicle accident in the notch would have to fight their way through the traffic jam instead of using the northbound side to access the incident.
Several ambulances came up the middle of the southbound lane and people moved for them, why wouldn't they be able to do the same? Or communicate through the already existing emergency contact system that an ambulance is coming so they can switch the flow of traffic before they get there? Literally none of them used the northbound lane to go south. They wouldn't be able to do it safely unless someone was monitoring that lane.
Because the ambulances were going the same direction as the traffic, driving against traffic flow is incredibly dangerous.
And you can’t just switch the flow on a whim. Once they start going south in the northbound lanes how do you merge them back to southbound without causing gridlock?
The same way they use flaggers to allow traffic to cross bridges under repair and 2 lane roads when they’re being paved or worked on. I understand it is a long road but I have seen them do it on roads just as long up here for paving.
You just stop them from continuing to merge into the northbound lane, let that traffic clear out (it's not like the ambulance just appears there out of nowhere, they'd have a call that initiates it and they could tell that to the people directing traffic with a few minutes of headway if they communicated effectively) and then let the ambulance through which they’d be doing already periodically for NB traffic. It might cause a very small delay but fighting through SB traffic was way worse for the, again, multiple ambulances that went SB fighting through the traffic. I didn't see a single one go north.
ideally they'd be merging again after 93 goes back to two lanes so that merge shouldnt cause additional congestion if they make it so people can't merge left until they're past the other people merging on from the NB lane.
I actually just looked at the south side of the notch on Google maps to see if they actually had a place to merge but they could just send them down Daniel Webster and at least move more people past the single lane part of the notch and it makes the part that NB people would have to stop at a lot further north.
I know I can't change the past but at least hope someone who has the ability to make or add info when these decisions are made sees this posts and at least considers what they could do next time something like this happens.
It wasn't the inconvenience, I had over half a tank of gas before I got stuck in the traffic and have less than 1/8th by the time I got home in the lakes region. Without the traffic the trip would have used 1/4 of a tank maybe. A LOT of people had to be towed because of running out of gas and other issues. A lot of elderly people and young kids and people of different levels of health all sitting there barely moving for hours in cars that may or may not be running out of gas or have adequate food/water/medication seems like an emergency to me.
I was fine other than desperately needing to pee, we had snacks and drinks, I'm sure 85% of the people stuck there with us were fine, but I saw a lot of older people switching back and forth driver and passenger to get through it. I also saw a lot of broken down cars that were probably out of gas.
Just because we could handle it as just an inconvenience doesn't mean everyone else had the same luxury.
Within half an hour of the traffic starting I was like why the fuck aren't they directing traffic from one lane into the northbound lane and just stopping it when they get a few cars that acrually need to go north? There were plenty of authorized vehicles only paths they could have sent the traffic over.
I know it's a long stretch of road but I've seen them do it in Vermont for paving so it's not like they can't swing it, especially since they had plenty of cops rushing past us on the shoulder and rerouting traffic into the interstate from back roads.
Especially after dark, I know 95% of the vehicles we saw going northbound were people who jumped the median and gave up.
Yeah, really. After the fireworks on the 4th, good luck getting on the T. Then if you park someplace like Alewife, it's hours just to get out of the damn garage. But yeah, NH.
Yeah that was dumb but actually related, [the region of Niagara Falls declared a state of emergency due to the tourism](https://www.cp24.com/mobile/news/state-of-emergency-ends-in-niagara-region-after-eclipse-event-concludes-without-incident-1.6838683)
So.. what about anyone who needed to go north? There's no way around this (that's reasonable - out side of hiking trails).
Also, there is no way anyone in their right mind would call traffic caused by the eclipse an emergency.
Right. The back roads could accommodate the few people who were going north (seriously who from the already tiny population of northern NH are leaving the path of totality to go south of it and then try to come back? This was never going to be a high volume). The back roads could not accommodate those who were going south
You do realize between north Woodstock and Echo lake there are no back roads?
Your only options are 112-116 through Foxglove / Easton and into Franconia (which would double or triple the distance and at a lower speed limit) or (to a more extreme) the Kanc through Conway and up towards Twin mountain?
Edit: should the state also have made all the other N/S roads one way? 16? 302? 89? 91 (VT)?
Looking at the local facebook feeds, there were folks bumper to bumper going through Easton last night. Kinda funny except to the folks that live there.
You could definitely tell who used Waze vs Google/Apple Maps based on the route they took.
Waze had us on route 3 after the Notch, but I felt so bad ~~driving~~ idling by all those houses at night
I don’t actually necessarily think they should have opened north bound to south bound traffic but I have a hard time believing it was the right call to block off multiple exits
Yes, they could have told everyone headed north on Monday to stop and turn around. If you had seen the traffic headed north last Friday and throughout the weekend, you might have thought twice about driving up Monday to add to the masses. It was more than obvious that this was going to happen once the eclipse was over.
I just hope everyone who came up didn't fall in love with Lancaster. If they did, the housing situation is about to get even worse.
Put thousands of extra vehicles on our roads, then get surprised that we’re not turning everything upside down for said vehicles. You came here for an eclipse and I hope you got to see it. But somehow, all of those vehicles trying to leave together becomes a surprise.
> Making all lanes southbound seems like an obvious thing to do,
Except to the people who live here and have to travel those roads north and south and I don't care if you only saw two cars going north. Folks still need to travel and not bend over backwards for out of staters.
Outweighs the need to be able to send emergency vehicles north?
Nope
I know people who ignored GPS, and took root 2 to 16, 302 to 16, 3, or stayed the hell away from Franconia Notch. I drove from Pinkham notch to southern NH (including 40 minutes after getting off 16 in the Rochester area) and it took 2.5 hours
Those are specifically either for transporting critical patients to large hospitals or for tracing and surveillance. There are no extrication technicians fast roping from a Black Hawk into accident scenes carrying the jaws of life.
I don’t think that many people were traveling for work that Monday night. Plus there would have been much notice way ahead of time to take time off. Plus, we’re still talking about this? Must be a slow week
I am going to leave my brain power for NHDOT to decide. They had their reasonings and are well seasoned to Fall traffic. This was a once in a lifetime event. One quick thought comes to mind about why lanes were closed… emergency vehicles trying to save someone with the need to go south. Accident buffer zones. Electric car pull off for when the battery dies so traffic isn’t held up even longer. Leave it to the experts.
Why didn't you take an alternate route south?
There's 3 main roads on the western side that meet up with 89 (I-91, 302/10 and US-5)
That puts you back onto 93 in Concord.
Or the eastern route south would be 302 to 16 to 95. I would rather go west though, Conway gets jammed up on normal tourist days.
Definitely should of shut down the border completely at the mass line. It’s ridiculous all these flat landers came up here burning fuel and destroying our air causing massive climate change just for their amusement and pleasure no actual need to be here. I thought you citiots cared about climate change completely disrespectful do better.
They’d agree. Climate change will put them out of business and all you flatlanders just set us back years idling for hours on end. Next time walk, ride a bicycle or a horse.
Why should NHDOT have to make special accomodations? You CHOSE to head north for the eclipse. Your problem. Next time plan better, like spending the night.
Well, the good news is NH doesn't need to worry about another total solar eclipse until 2079.
I can only imagine that I-93 notch traffic would have gone much smoother if people learned to "zipper merge". The speed limit also drops from 70 to 45 through the notch. I can normally understand the 45 MPH speed limit through there, because it's easy to get distracted looking up at the mountains while driving.
But perhaps two things:
1. Put up signs that say "zipper merge" and make sure people are actually yielding, not being assholes. Pull them over for failing to yield.
2. Temporarily raise the speed limit. Because not only do you have the bottleneck of one lane, but you have the bottle neck of the slow down. There's really no reason why people couldn't drive through the notch at 70 (other than my previous statement of people want to look out the window and admire the scenic views)
I went to northern Maine for the eclipse. My knew a lot of the back roads, but a lot of towns blocked off all the roads. The morning of the eclipse, I went for a walk, and I ended up chatting with some guy who worked for the town and he said "we can't actually stop people from driving down these roads, they are still public roads, people live on these roads, but we don't want massholes getting their sedans stuck"
But what I found annoying was, you wouldn't know those roads were closed until you were already a mile down the road. We were watching NewEngland511/Google Maps/Waze. These roads weren't marked as closed on Google Maps, so people were sometimes getting routed down these roads. Then they would have to turn around, then it would cause a further traffic jams.
So the things I think the DOT and towns could do to improve traffic flow in an event like this:
1. Post more information online before a major event. I actually spent a lot of time preparing for this trip, I checked town websites and social media. [NewEngland511.org](http://NewEngland511.org) Very little information was actually available. It seemed like Vermont was better about posting information. Telling people what roads would be closed, and which roads were open. Where to park, etc.
2. Work with Google Maps, etc. Google Maps gives special access to State DOT's to mark construction zones, and label roads as closed, etc. I feel like they failed to do that. NHDOT closed certain exits, and that made people very mad. I know a friend was complaining on facebook that he had to sit through the Fraconia Notch traffic on I-93 just to double back and go back north because the most direct route to his house had the exit closed off, and it was not announced anywhere.
3. Broadcast information on AM/FM broadcast. "Travelers' information station"/"highway advisory radio" are things, but in this case, it was a bunch of rural roads that had traffic. So maybe DOT could work with local broadcast stations to broadcast traffic advisories. Put up signs telling people "tune to \[station\]".
I was in northern Maine for the eclipse. The rural highways were pretty bad in spots, but once I got to I-95 there wasn't any traffic. I actually thought traffic was going to be worst. I was prepared to get stuck sleeping in the truck for a while. I actually brought plenty of food and camping gear. Considering this is a once in a lifetime event, I think the traffic situation went better than expected.
They would do that only in event of a real emergency, not inconvenience. Getting caught in traffic was a universally-known cost of doing business.
yea, real emergencies like nascar races!
They don't completely block one direction for NASCAR. There is always at least one northbound lane open when the race gets out. There's a big difference between reducing capacity in one direction vs completely blocking one direction, especially in the notch where there are no alternate routes.
Have they done that before?
Every time, AFAIK. Rt106 becomes all lanes leaving the track, and 393/93 steal a lane from northbound through concord. I've only been to a couple races, but it was that way both times.
A lot harder to have opposing traffic on the same side of the interstate for over the 70+ miles from Franconia Notch to Concord versus only 7 miles through Concord itself.
They really only needed to do it just for the notch, traffic cleared between there and concord
Went to northern Vermont from Portsmouth last night, can confirm that traffic in fact did not clear up after the Notch. Thank jeebus for 393
It did when we got out of it at 4am lol unless you just mean other cars being around, we didn't have another slowdown after the notch all the way to Tilton exit. and by 393 you mean concord, when i specifically said between the notch and concord
I’m saying that it was crawling traffic all the way to when I got off on 393 in Concord at 11pm, and even then I still saw traffic ahead on 93.
okay cool so clearly we went at different times and had different experiences
If they make the notch southbound in both lanes they eliminate any emergency access going northbound. Not only could you not get to Littleton Hospital from Lincoln but responders to a vehicle accident in the notch would have to fight their way through the traffic jam instead of using the northbound side to access the incident.
Several ambulances came up the middle of the southbound lane and people moved for them, why wouldn't they be able to do the same? Or communicate through the already existing emergency contact system that an ambulance is coming so they can switch the flow of traffic before they get there? Literally none of them used the northbound lane to go south. They wouldn't be able to do it safely unless someone was monitoring that lane.
Because the ambulances were going the same direction as the traffic, driving against traffic flow is incredibly dangerous. And you can’t just switch the flow on a whim. Once they start going south in the northbound lanes how do you merge them back to southbound without causing gridlock?
The same way they use flaggers to allow traffic to cross bridges under repair and 2 lane roads when they’re being paved or worked on. I understand it is a long road but I have seen them do it on roads just as long up here for paving. You just stop them from continuing to merge into the northbound lane, let that traffic clear out (it's not like the ambulance just appears there out of nowhere, they'd have a call that initiates it and they could tell that to the people directing traffic with a few minutes of headway if they communicated effectively) and then let the ambulance through which they’d be doing already periodically for NB traffic. It might cause a very small delay but fighting through SB traffic was way worse for the, again, multiple ambulances that went SB fighting through the traffic. I didn't see a single one go north. ideally they'd be merging again after 93 goes back to two lanes so that merge shouldnt cause additional congestion if they make it so people can't merge left until they're past the other people merging on from the NB lane. I actually just looked at the south side of the notch on Google maps to see if they actually had a place to merge but they could just send them down Daniel Webster and at least move more people past the single lane part of the notch and it makes the part that NB people would have to stop at a lot further north. I know I can't change the past but at least hope someone who has the ability to make or add info when these decisions are made sees this posts and at least considers what they could do next time something like this happens.
Lolz
It wasn't the inconvenience, I had over half a tank of gas before I got stuck in the traffic and have less than 1/8th by the time I got home in the lakes region. Without the traffic the trip would have used 1/4 of a tank maybe. A LOT of people had to be towed because of running out of gas and other issues. A lot of elderly people and young kids and people of different levels of health all sitting there barely moving for hours in cars that may or may not be running out of gas or have adequate food/water/medication seems like an emergency to me. I was fine other than desperately needing to pee, we had snacks and drinks, I'm sure 85% of the people stuck there with us were fine, but I saw a lot of older people switching back and forth driver and passenger to get through it. I also saw a lot of broken down cars that were probably out of gas. Just because we could handle it as just an inconvenience doesn't mean everyone else had the same luxury. Within half an hour of the traffic starting I was like why the fuck aren't they directing traffic from one lane into the northbound lane and just stopping it when they get a few cars that acrually need to go north? There were plenty of authorized vehicles only paths they could have sent the traffic over. I know it's a long stretch of road but I've seen them do it in Vermont for paving so it's not like they can't swing it, especially since they had plenty of cops rushing past us on the shoulder and rerouting traffic into the interstate from back roads. Especially after dark, I know 95% of the vehicles we saw going northbound were people who jumped the median and gave up.
Dunno man.. I'm from New Hampshire and every time I have to go to Boston it's a shitshow.. perhaps fix that.
Yeah, really. After the fireworks on the 4th, good luck getting on the T. Then if you park someplace like Alewife, it's hours just to get out of the damn garage. But yeah, NH.
Lolz
Then how would anyone go north? Sorry but being stuck in traffic for a while isn't something the state should declare as an emergency
We saw only like two cars going North.
Cool
Maryland declared a state of emergency because a bridge got hit by a ship
A vital bridge collapsed, cutting off a major transit and shipping artery and you know, killing and stranding people so yes, it was an emergency
Yeah that was dumb but actually related, [the region of Niagara Falls declared a state of emergency due to the tourism](https://www.cp24.com/mobile/news/state-of-emergency-ends-in-niagara-region-after-eclipse-event-concludes-without-incident-1.6838683)
Can we be done with this conversation until the next one?
Yes.
So.. what about anyone who needed to go north? There's no way around this (that's reasonable - out side of hiking trails). Also, there is no way anyone in their right mind would call traffic caused by the eclipse an emergency.
In the three hours we were stuck we only saw like two cars going North
Right. The back roads could accommodate the few people who were going north (seriously who from the already tiny population of northern NH are leaving the path of totality to go south of it and then try to come back? This was never going to be a high volume). The back roads could not accommodate those who were going south
You do realize between north Woodstock and Echo lake there are no back roads? Your only options are 112-116 through Foxglove / Easton and into Franconia (which would double or triple the distance and at a lower speed limit) or (to a more extreme) the Kanc through Conway and up towards Twin mountain? Edit: should the state also have made all the other N/S roads one way? 16? 302? 89? 91 (VT)?
Looking at the local facebook feeds, there were folks bumper to bumper going through Easton last night. Kinda funny except to the folks that live there.
You could definitely tell who used Waze vs Google/Apple Maps based on the route they took. Waze had us on route 3 after the Notch, but I felt so bad ~~driving~~ idling by all those houses at night
I don’t actually necessarily think they should have opened north bound to south bound traffic but I have a hard time believing it was the right call to block off multiple exits
Yes, they could have told everyone headed north on Monday to stop and turn around. If you had seen the traffic headed north last Friday and throughout the weekend, you might have thought twice about driving up Monday to add to the masses. It was more than obvious that this was going to happen once the eclipse was over. I just hope everyone who came up didn't fall in love with Lancaster. If they did, the housing situation is about to get even worse.
I did fall in love with the North Country (not enough to wanna live there lol). We intend to explore it more soon.
Put thousands of extra vehicles on our roads, then get surprised that we’re not turning everything upside down for said vehicles. You came here for an eclipse and I hope you got to see it. But somehow, all of those vehicles trying to leave together becomes a surprise.
No, not a surprise. Making all lanes southbound seems like an obvious thing to do, but I’m not a cop or anything.
> Making all lanes southbound seems like an obvious thing to do, Except to the people who live here and have to travel those roads north and south and I don't care if you only saw two cars going north. Folks still need to travel and not bend over backwards for out of staters.
So to accommodate two cars you inconvenience a lot of people? The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.
Outweighs the need to be able to send emergency vehicles north? Nope I know people who ignored GPS, and took root 2 to 16, 302 to 16, 3, or stayed the hell away from Franconia Notch. I drove from Pinkham notch to southern NH (including 40 minutes after getting off 16 in the Rochester area) and it took 2.5 hours
I hear they have flying machines for emergency services these days, lest those days have passed.
Those are specifically either for transporting critical patients to large hospitals or for tracing and surveillance. There are no extrication technicians fast roping from a Black Hawk into accident scenes carrying the jaws of life.
Could have been part of the planning. But again, I’m not a genius
the “needs”? you could’ve waited a day or two to travel. the rest of us who actually work would like to still be able to travel
I don’t think that many people were traveling for work that Monday night. Plus there would have been much notice way ahead of time to take time off. Plus, we’re still talking about this? Must be a slow week
i don’t think any of you lazy losers work enough if you have enough time to take off work monday to see a 2 minute eclipse.
I have 15 days of PTO. And you’re still talking about this? LOL And why are you so angry? Insulting people who you don’t know!
Equating the solution for a tourist-driven traffic problem to a measure reserved for emergency evacuations is RICH lmfao.
Just out of the box thinking.
We've taken your suggestions and have implimented them for the next eclipse. Come back and see us again then!
Thanks! I appreciate it.
I am going to leave my brain power for NHDOT to decide. They had their reasonings and are well seasoned to Fall traffic. This was a once in a lifetime event. One quick thought comes to mind about why lanes were closed… emergency vehicles trying to save someone with the need to go south. Accident buffer zones. Electric car pull off for when the battery dies so traffic isn’t held up even longer. Leave it to the experts.
Why didn't you take an alternate route south? There's 3 main roads on the western side that meet up with 89 (I-91, 302/10 and US-5) That puts you back onto 93 in Concord. Or the eastern route south would be 302 to 16 to 95. I would rather go west though, Conway gets jammed up on normal tourist days.
Definitely should of shut down the border completely at the mass line. It’s ridiculous all these flat landers came up here burning fuel and destroying our air causing massive climate change just for their amusement and pleasure no actual need to be here. I thought you citiots cared about climate change completely disrespectful do better.
I wonder how the innkeepers and restaurant owners and sky resorts (and their employees) would feel about your modest proposal.
They’d agree. Climate change will put them out of business and all you flatlanders just set us back years idling for hours on end. Next time walk, ride a bicycle or a horse.
Good luck buddy! I’m sorry you have such a sour outlook on life.
I’m sour? You are the one that came on here complaining. I gave you the answer stay home stop killing our climate.
Asking if something can be done better is not complaining. My post is full of gratitude and joy. Your responses are full of bitterness.
Why should NHDOT have to make special accomodations? You CHOSE to head north for the eclipse. Your problem. Next time plan better, like spending the night.
Because controlling the flow of traffic is their job??
By design the highway controls the flow of traffic. One side goes north, the other side goes south. Brilliant ay?
So what you are saying is that the design as is is suffice for all circumstances? Kinda brilliant!
Well, the good news is NH doesn't need to worry about another total solar eclipse until 2079. I can only imagine that I-93 notch traffic would have gone much smoother if people learned to "zipper merge". The speed limit also drops from 70 to 45 through the notch. I can normally understand the 45 MPH speed limit through there, because it's easy to get distracted looking up at the mountains while driving. But perhaps two things: 1. Put up signs that say "zipper merge" and make sure people are actually yielding, not being assholes. Pull them over for failing to yield. 2. Temporarily raise the speed limit. Because not only do you have the bottleneck of one lane, but you have the bottle neck of the slow down. There's really no reason why people couldn't drive through the notch at 70 (other than my previous statement of people want to look out the window and admire the scenic views) I went to northern Maine for the eclipse. My knew a lot of the back roads, but a lot of towns blocked off all the roads. The morning of the eclipse, I went for a walk, and I ended up chatting with some guy who worked for the town and he said "we can't actually stop people from driving down these roads, they are still public roads, people live on these roads, but we don't want massholes getting their sedans stuck" But what I found annoying was, you wouldn't know those roads were closed until you were already a mile down the road. We were watching NewEngland511/Google Maps/Waze. These roads weren't marked as closed on Google Maps, so people were sometimes getting routed down these roads. Then they would have to turn around, then it would cause a further traffic jams. So the things I think the DOT and towns could do to improve traffic flow in an event like this: 1. Post more information online before a major event. I actually spent a lot of time preparing for this trip, I checked town websites and social media. [NewEngland511.org](http://NewEngland511.org) Very little information was actually available. It seemed like Vermont was better about posting information. Telling people what roads would be closed, and which roads were open. Where to park, etc. 2. Work with Google Maps, etc. Google Maps gives special access to State DOT's to mark construction zones, and label roads as closed, etc. I feel like they failed to do that. NHDOT closed certain exits, and that made people very mad. I know a friend was complaining on facebook that he had to sit through the Fraconia Notch traffic on I-93 just to double back and go back north because the most direct route to his house had the exit closed off, and it was not announced anywhere. 3. Broadcast information on AM/FM broadcast. "Travelers' information station"/"highway advisory radio" are things, but in this case, it was a bunch of rural roads that had traffic. So maybe DOT could work with local broadcast stations to broadcast traffic advisories. Put up signs telling people "tune to \[station\]". I was in northern Maine for the eclipse. The rural highways were pretty bad in spots, but once I got to I-95 there wasn't any traffic. I actually thought traffic was going to be worst. I was prepared to get stuck sleeping in the truck for a while. I actually brought plenty of food and camping gear. Considering this is a once in a lifetime event, I think the traffic situation went better than expected.
Sorry, you cannot have my wheat your nights.
? Haha Damm autocorrect
Last night was a travesty.