Roanoke Times: A national survey of big-rig drivers shows that truckers love I-81 in Virginia, rating it the fifth-best stretch of road in America. I drove back and forth on 81 between Charlottesville and Blacksburg every week for a year and a half, and I think it’s great. The survey also ranked us as fourth-worst for the availability of overnight parking, third-best for the quality of our truck stops, and as having the third-toughest truck inspections and law enforcement.
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I never was a big fan of 81, but maybe that was just because I was on there from 66 all the way down to Blacksburg, some 180 miles. I always felt like there were too many trucks on the road, especially surrounded by them at night, that wasn’t fun to deal with.
Of course they love I-81. They love it because there are no shoulders for cops to hang out on and they can go about 90 mph downhill and get 10 feet behind some poor driver who knows if he has to brake, he’s going to die. Then they slow down to 45 to go uphill, and ride alongside each other so you have two huge trucks taking up both lanes and nobody can go around them.
81 does seem to have gotten better in the past few years. Or maybe I’ve just gotten more used to it.
I’m a huge fan of I-81–it has some incredibly beautiful stretches of roadway, no tolls, the option of good meals at non-chain restaurants. My trips were usually to Harrisonburg and the surrounding areas.
After a decade of driving I-95 up to the Northeast, I’ve made a couple trips now via I-81 through Pennsylvania as well. The drive is a little longer, but the route north has many of the same pluses as the drive south–including three FM hair metal stations within a 30 miles radius of Harrisburg, PA. Righteous!
81 through Pennsylvania is both interminably boring and vastly better than taking 95.
Some day I’m going to write a work of fiction with a character named Dunmore Throop.
Truckers are happy with I-81? Good, send them an invoice. I’ve got a shiny high-speed rail I want to buy for the corridor.