Travel Anxiety

I heard someone recently talking about the anxiety that everyone seems to have when they travel through a tunnel. It may be slight but there is always a relief when one exits a tunnel.

Here in Oregon there are several tunnels that we travel through on a regular basis. There is the Arch Cape Tunnel, which was in danger of collapse a few years ago. There is the tunnel on Hwy 26 which had a partial collapse a few years ago killing an ODOT worker. There are two tunnels, one for each direction right before Portland on Hwy 26 and there is one on Burnside up in the hills on the down side entering Portland. There is also the tunnel across the river before Chinook.

The tunnels mentioned above are through rock, but in New York we had the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels that went under the Hudson River. These are long tunnels that twist and turn. Once inside you lose all radio communication. Seeing any water on the road raises suspicion even though one knows these tunnels are drilled through the bed rock under the river.

There seems to be an innate urgency to get through a tunnel especially when you cannot see the exit and when the exit comes into view a feeling of relief ensues.

I’ve known some anxiety when traveling over a long bridge as well. I wonder what would happen if there was a quake while in mid span. We’ve all seen the movies of Galloping Gertie collapsing in the wind. We’ve seen what happened to the Bay Bridge in Oakland during the quake. Let’s not forget the recent bridge collapse in Minneapolis which was just a structure failure. So going over the Astoria Bridge, the Freemont Bridge or the Lewis and Clark Bridge in Longview gets my attention by reason of anxiety. I even get a jolt going over the steel grate bridge over by the Fair Grounds. I tend to think that bridges are inherently more dangerous than tunnels, but oddly I get more anxious traveling underground.