Except for today...
The blue route is what I was aiming for. I wanted to go east (right) on Manhattan Beach Blvd. and then south (down) on Inglewood Ave.[The green is what I ended up taking.] As I approached Inglewood, I noticed that traffic was really bad. I wondered why. I soon saw that the cops had shut down a section of road (denoted by giant red box) because of a huge accident. As I turned right (green) onto the side street, I did indeed see that there was a big accident and it looked like a car had been Hulk Smashed. (I hope that person is ok...)
Once I entered the side streets, I had a feeling that it would be backed up there too because all of the traffic funneled into that side street (there were stop signs). I've been in this area before so I thought I would be tricky and bypass this traffic so I made a swift right turn (going back west still denoted by green) and proceeded to the next side street. I made that left turn (now going down again) and I was stopped in traffic. I wondered why this was. My roommate and I put on our "save the world" hats today [meaning we carpooled]. He decided to get out and walk to see what was happening. I did not pick him up until way later.
Apparently I wasn't that familiar with the area because now I see that making that turn did not do me any good. In fact, it may have made things worse. That street (Johnston) is very narrow. This being a residential neighborhood, many of the residents parked alongside their house on the street. Johnston Ave. is not capable of handling 4 cars side-by-side. So there were some instances in which traffic would just be gridlocked with no cars able to move. (The red arrow pointing upwards denotes an onslaught of traffic heading northwest). So we were stuck. Well... I guess just me at this point. My roommate was far away at this point. At the next few intersections (Thomas and Hawkins), I was met by other drivers who also thought they were being clever by avoiding the initial traffic on Dow. They too were misled. Traffic traffic traffic.
As it turns out, everyone ended up together anyways. I wonder if it would've been better if I just stuck on the initial street.
I picked up my roommate at the orange dot. Luckily, he was able to avoid all the traffic.
It took us about 30 minutes just to get back out onto Inglewood. Lame.
I don't even normally take this route home. I only did it because I wanted to go shopping at Von's to buy some fruit....
Lesson learned: An apple a day will get you stuck in traffic.
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