I’ve been living in Amarillo too long to remember what a real traffic jam is like.
The highway work on I-27 is really annoying me with the traffic backup. But it's nothing compared to the ones I got caught in Dallas or Minneapolis. When I lived up in the Twin Cities, natives told me there were two seasons: winter and road repair. And with the less-than-ideal weather in the upper Midwest pretty much all the time, the road construction made driving really dangerous.
I remember a time driving through a construction zone on a rain-slickened highway when the car in front of me went into a spin. I hit my brakes and followed suit, smashing into the guard rail and spinning 180 degrees so I was facing oncoming traffic. The drivers were nice enough to stop across three lanes so I could turn around and head in the right direction.
I guess we shouldn’t complain too much about the I-27 work and the traffic tie-up it causes, but we will anyway.