Where I live, my conception of "traffic" is one other car on the road, "heavy traffic" is two cars, and more is probably a funeral procession. But both Sunday and today I drove from North Central Washington State to Portland, OR and back (round trip each day, about 700 miles total each day), and while it's mostly my opinion, and both subjective and anecdotal, I thought there was a lot less traffic than normal in most of the areas I drove through.
I'm just wondering what other people are seeing in their parts of the country.
For the detail oriented, my route was US97 from Chelan, WA to Biggs, OR, then I84 to I205 to the SE side of Portland. Both times I left about 7:30AM and got home around 8PM, on the road most of the time.
A lot of the areas I drive through have more bears than people (Blewett Pass, Satus Pass), but, for example, Blewett Pass is the connection from N Central WA to I90, and usually has a lot more traffic than I saw on either trip and the weather was gorgeous - sunny and warm - both days. I've seen more traffic over the pass in snowstorms.
I84 going either E or W usually handles a lot more traffic - I drive just slightly over the speed limit, and normally someone passes me every couple of minutes. Today, I got passed maybe 3 or 4 times in about 100 miles.
The two biggest indicators were in the Portland area. I normally take I205 S from I84 to Powell Blvd, and always hit traffic on I205 that's anywhere from 20MPH to stop-and-go - almost always at midday, and often mid-week, like today. Today, I just cruised along at 60MPH.
The other odd thing today was filling up. The cheapest gas I've found in the Portland area is at Travel America in Troutdale, about 20 miles east of Portland. Today's price was $2.89 ($2.99 to $3.06 everywhere else in OR or WA that I noticed). Normally TA has lines of cars waiting to fill up - today I pulled right up to the farthest pump in my lane - all of the 6 or so other pumps in that lane were vacant. That's never happened before.
I'm just wondering what other people are seeing. Is the price of gas causing a lot of people to drive less?