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Got stuck behind a parade that wasn't on any map for 45 minutes
Last Tuesday I left work early thinking I'd beat traffic, but I hit a random high school parade on Elm Street that wasn't listed anywhere. I sat there for almost an hour just watching kids in marching bands while my GPS kept recalculating. Nobody around me knew about it either, we were all just trapped. Has anyone else ever gotten caught in a surprise street closure or event that totally wrecked your commute?
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faithcampbell21d ago
The whole "GPS kept recalculating" thing is such a mood, it really is. I had something similar where my phone just kept trying to reroute me through the same blocked road over and over, like it didn't even realize there was a parade. It kept saying "turn left in 200 feet" and I'm just sitting there watching a tuba player march by. What gets me is how these events never seem to be on any of the traffic apps, even the ones that claim to have real time updates. You'd think they'd sync up with the city's permit system or something by now, it's not that hard to check a calendar.
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wells.olivia21d ago
Right?? The tuba player bit had me cackling because that's literally what happened to me last summer. I ended up just pulling over and waiting for the parade to pass, but my phone kept screaming "proceed to the route" like I was the one being unreasonable. @the_amy makes a good point about the permit system being a mess though, my friend tried to register a block party once and the city website literally crashed for three days. Still, it drives me nuts how the apps will show construction closures that are weeks old but miss a whole parade blocking four intersections. The real time data thing explains a lot actually, I never thought about how the app just sees traffic instead of a road closure. So I guess we're all just stuck relying on our eyes and hoping for the best.
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the_amy21d ago
Actually, I gotta push back on this a little. I think the GPS apps do a decent job most of the time because parades and block parties are usually temporary and not something they can reliably predict. Like, my city has a parade every Saturday in July and the routes change depending on weather or which marching band shows up. The permit system is a mess too, I work with a local event organizer and he says half the time the city forgets to update the online calendar until the day before. So syncing up would probably just give wrong info. Plus, with real time updates, they rely on user reports and cell phone data, and if everyone's stuck in the parade traffic, the app sees it as congestion not a closed road. So it recalculates based on that, which is why you get the same loop over and over. Honestly, turning the volume down and using your eyes is still the best bet for stuff like that.
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