What worked - Traffic

There was plenty of panicked press before the eclipse warning of terrible traffic jams. We were urged to arrive early and leave late. We were told that last-minute weather updates would cause eclipse chasers to hit the roads in an urgent rush. We were warned about out-of-towers driving around lost and confused.

These things really didn't happen.

Everything was civilized and orderly.

That said, here's a traffic congestion map of the United States on the day of the eclipse:

You can clearly see that there is increased congestion on the eclipse route, but there were no reports of any of the above problems.