Welcome to Tesla Motors Club
Discuss Tesla's Model S, Model 3, Model X, Model Y, Cybertruck, Roadster and More.
Register

I-95 between Washington and Richmond

This site may earn commission on affiliate links.
Just drove up from Boca Raton to Philadelphia. Traffic on I-95 South was essentially stopped almost the whole way between DC and Richmond at 9AM. Is this common? I'm going back next weekend. Is there an alternate route that will still allow me to use the superchargers? All help appreciated.
 
Just drove up from Boca Raton to Philadelphia. Traffic on I-95 South was essentially stopped almost the whole way between DC and Richmond at 9AM. Is this common?
Yes.

Is there an alternate route that will still allow me to use the superchargers? All help appreciated.

Not easily unfortunately... the two between Richmond and DC are on that corridor...
 
I just did a trip from NJ to NC and back via 95 through that area and it completely sucked. Added over 2 hours to my trip due to traffic through there on each direction.

Any time within +/- 3 hours of rush hour on a week day (9AM and 5PM) is pretty much time to avoid that entire area of 95 from Richmond to Baltimore, unless you like stop and go traffic.

I hate that section of 95 so much I'm trying to find a way to use I-81 to head to NC next time. There are zero superchargers, however. But there does seem to be a KOA that could make the trip work out using only one range charge there and make it to my destination... I seriously would rather spend a night in the Model S than sit in that traffic again any time soon.
 
Yeah we locals hate it too. My siblings in VA will often cut over to 301, go across Harry Nice bridge (68 miles from Glen Allen) and then up 97 to Baltimore Harbor tunnel through to 95 (bridge to Newark is 131) so in good weather, with conservative driving if you prefer stop lights to stop'n'go, it is technically an option.
 
If you have an 85 kWh battery then take Rte 301 to avoid the 95 madness. You can easily make the leap between Newark and Glen Allen. It's more challenging with a 60 kWh.

Don't bother with Rte 1. It's almost worse with all of the traffic lights.
 
Wait, south on 95 at 9 am on a Sun? Am I reading the original post correctly? That... Isn't what I would call "normal". Fri through most of Sat is bad because everyone is heading south for the weekend... The during Sat it switches/goes in parallel to have the north start to be bad. I don't usually see it red on the map outside of those times.

If you want to jump back and forth between 95 and route 1 it can be profitable but you really need to know the area to just wing it. Fortunately Google just made that game a heck of a lot easier with their new update on Google Maps for your phone (android at least... I assume Apple is similar though). It now provides in real time " alternate" routes and I have used that to jump back and forth quite well on that stretch of road. In any case traffic would have to be quite bad for me to detour over into 301 but then, I am not usually routing around NOVA since I would be trying to head home or come from home.

- - - Updated - - -

Honestly though if you can just time it to the correct time of day and you should be fine...ish... Google on the web browser has a really cool traffic estimator where you can pick the day of the week and the time of day and it will give you the average traffic for those stretches of road. Outside of an accident it is pretty accurate. I would hit that up to plan your return trip and it will be smooth sailing.
 
You can plan all you want, unfortunately, but all it takes is one truck to loose (or lose) a load of lumber or whatever and alt plans are futile.

Linkster, "corridor of terror" has just entered my vocabulary - lol. My siblings battle the Richmond DC section of it and I battle the DC Balto section.
 
I've lived half a dozen places between SC and CT for most of the last 57 years, and as everyone says, I-95 sucks almost everywhere. I avoid it like the plague. It's understandable, but unfortunate, that the first coastal SC corridor utilizes it. When driving the CT-VA-SC stretch pretty frequently 15-20 years ago, we would accept an hour longer trip to use I-81, however, there are now many trucks on that road which are slowed by the terrain and traffic load.

The SC buildout will hopefully enable more non-interstate travel for long trips. For the GA-VA stretch, it may be worth going Savannah/Columbia/Burlington/Petersburg when feasible, but the Richmond-DC stretch will probably never have much more option than I-95 and small roads. Fwiw, I routinely ice-drive from Chapel Hill to Columbia on US 15 to avoid the congestion and stress of the interstate routes and Raleigh/Charlotte, and it adds almost nothing to the total trip time.
 
We need to get someone in Waldorf to install a 80A J1772 or HPWC. That would make the jump on 301 more tolerable. Maybe crowd funding an effort?

Or get on Tesla to move the Bethesda mobile supercharger over to Waldorf somewhere.

Here's the current L2 situation in that area, which isn't bad (from Plugshare):

waldorf301.jpg



One of the problems is as you head south on 301, it's charging desert. I have a friend in Ruther Glen that has a HPWC near King's Dominion. Otherwise, the next ones are Ashland - you might as well drive slower to hit the Glen Allen Supercharger. That bottom green marker is the last J1772 before Glen Allen on 301, which is 66 miles.
 
Again I wanted to thank everyone for your help. We made the return trip through VA on Sunday. It was crowded and did slow on occasion but we made it with only a 15 minute penalty compared with my projected times. I intend to post my trip data soon, to help others plan a trip through this potential bottleneck.
 
Again I wanted to thank everyone for your help. We made the return trip through VA on Sunday. It was crowded and did slow on occasion but we made it with only a 15 minute penalty compared with my projected times. I intend to post my trip data soon, to help others plan a trip through this potential bottleneck.

I was on 95 through VA on Sunday as well. I was going to post a time-lapse video created from my dash cam video and highlight the VA traffic portion here in this thread eventually.

Just curious, you weren't the silver MS I passed on I-85 in NC by any chance were you? :)

Screenshot_2014-08-24-15-37-42.png
 
An ICE-driving friend of mine looked at the 2015 SpC map and his first remark was about the lack of coverage of I-81 in Virginia. Going from Montreal to Florida, he takes that route to avoid the I-95 traffic around DC.

Supposedly they are looking into this... That was a few months ago and I haven't heard anything else on the subject but I am sure it would get tacked on to the 2016 expansion at this point.
 
Nope, I am a black one. Went through about 10 to 11 AM. Traffic was much heavier than seen on your cam. Other than those cars seen at Superchargers I do not recall passing or being passed by another "S" the entire trip, either way.