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Ci fosse stata una deviazione! Ora siamo imbottigliati.

Ci fosse stata una deviazione! Ora siamo imbottigliati.
If only there had been a detour! Now we are stuck in traffic.
From Lesson 324:Past wishes (exclamative subjunctive)·Italian

Questions & Answers about Ci fosse stata una deviazione! Ora siamo imbottigliati.

Why does this sentence start directly with Ci fosse stata instead of Se ci fosse stata?
In Italian, you can express an unfulfilled past wish simply by using the past perfect subjunctive (congiuntivo trapassato) as an independent exclamation, completely dropping the word se (if). It gives the sentence a strong emotional tone of regret, translating to 'If only there had been...!'
How does the verb esserci (to be there) work in this past subjunctive form?
Esserci takes essere as its auxiliary verb. To form the past perfect subjunctive, you combine the imperfect subjunctive of essere (which is fosse for the third person) with its past participle (stato). The pronoun ci stays at the front, giving us ci fosse stata.
Why does the past participle stata end in -a here?
Because the auxiliary verb is essere, the past participle must agree in gender and number with the subject of the sentence. The subject here is una deviazione (a detour), which is feminine singular, so stato changes to stata.
Imbottigliati looks like it comes from the word for 'bottle'. Is this how you usually say 'stuck in traffic'?
Yes! The adjective imbottigliato literally means 'bottled up', and it is the standard, everyday Italian idiom for being stuck in a traffic jam (un ingorgo).

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