On the Road North

Happy Boxing Day to all. The Brave Astronaut Clan is heading north today to visit with my family - for the second year in a row all of my siblings will be present for Christmas (I'm sure wherever my mother is, she's mad - she very rarely could get all of us together). We have a full lineup of "social aerobics" planned for the few days we will be up there, including a trip to NYC on Tuesday.

The challenge today will be getting to my father's in less time than it took us last year. It shouldn't be hard - as last year's trip clocked in at nearly 11 hours. I might have to use this bypass around the Delaware tolls, as I really hate those tolls and the backups they create (see the map at right, click to embiggen).

I hope that Santa brought you everything you wanted and more!

I Object! Now Get the Hell Out of My Way

The results of the National Drivers Test for 2009 have been released. New York, the state of my birth and where I learned to drive, ranked last. Further, the list ranks Maryland drivers worse than Virginia drivers and that is just a load of crap. And then again DC drivers fare even worse than that. The Brave Astronaut clan is off today for a family function in Delaware, which brings up a whole new set of issues of traffic and road rage.

Think you know what you're doing out there on the road? Take the National Drivers Test and find out. I got 75%. And I am from New York, where the first thing one does when buying a new car is rip out the turn signal and throw it out the window . . .

State Rankings

Note: Many states tied for the same position in the rankings.

1 IDAHO
1 WISCONSIN
3 MONTANA
4 KANSAS
5 SOUTH DAKOTA
5 NEBRASKA
7 UTAH
8 WYOMING
8 IOWA
8 OREGON
8 MINNESOTA
12 ALASKA
12 NORTH DAKOTA
14 VERMONT
15 COLORADO
15 MISSOURI
17 OKLAHOMA
17 WASHINGTON
19 NEW MEXICO
20 NORTH CAROLINA
21 VIRGINIA
22 INDIANA
22 MICHIGAN
24 ARKANSAS
24 TEXAS
26 ALABAMA
26 NEVADA
28 WEST VIRGINIA
29 ILLINOIS
30 ARIZONA
31 MAINE
32 DELAWARE
33 NEW HAMPSHIRE
34 OHIO
35 KENTUCKY
36 PENNSYLVANIA
37 LOUISIANA
38 TENNESSEE
38 MISSISSIPPI
40 SOUTH CAROLINA
40 MARYLAND
42 CONNECTICUT
43 FLORIDA
44 DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
45 MASSACHUSETTS
46 RHODE ISLAND
47 GEORGIA
48 CALIFORNIA
49 HAWAII
50 NEW JERSEY
51 NEW YORK

There's Just No Reason

As most of you know, the Brave Astronaut family had a mini-beach weekend last weekend in Wilmington, NC. On Sunday, we packed up and headed home. I was not feeling well so Mrs. BA had to do the bulk of the driving. We left Wilmington around 2:30 in the afternoon. From Wilmington, it is about 6 hours of driving time. So with a stop for dinner and some time for the boys to run around, we hoped to be home by about 10:00. [cue laughter]

We encountered a stray thunderstorm in Wilmington which delayed us right at the outset. We did OK on I-40 and then on the bypass up to I-95. We were only about 1/2 hour behind schedule when we stopped for dinner and some exercise for everyone. We piled back into the family truckster and crossed the Virginia border from North Carolina. We even managed to do OK on the I-295 jog around Richmond (most of this is from a hazy recollection as I fitfully dozed next to the saintly Mrs. BA, shouldering the yeoman's task. Then we reached the merge with I-95. That's where it all went to H E double hockey sticks. From south of Fredericksburg to just outside of Washington, we crawled. For. No. Reason. There was no accident, no rain or weather, just a Sunday afternoon on I-95 in the Commonwealth. We pulled up in front of the Brave Astronaut launchpad at nearly midnight. 9 1/2 hours after we left.

So it seemed somewhat absurd to read this. I've ranted about traffic in the DC area before. I've even proposed solutions. They are introducing a variable speed limit system on the Beltway. We already have one of those, it's called normal traffic. So with lots of new construction projects in the pipeline here in DC, how long until we are back to walking to work on the roofs of the stalled cars on the roads?

What the Font?

If you are a reader of Amy's blog, you've already seen this. In my defense, I was planning to post about it, but she beat me to it. Enjoy nonetheless, it's very funny.

Kottke got me thinking further about fonts when this post appeared, detailing the new Mencap typeface, designed for those with certain learning disabilities. In that same kottke post, he mentions the new Clearview typeface, which is making its appearance known around the country as road signs are replaced with new, easier to read signs. You'll notice the difference when you see them.

Finally, growing up in the 70s and early 80s, television often turned to PBS standards as Mister Roger's Neighborhood, Sesame Street, Electric Company, or Zoom (and I'm sorry if the theme has now popped into your heads - "Write ZOOM, Z-Double-O-M, Box 3-5-0, Boston, Mass 0-2-1-3-4: send it to ZOOM!". Some enterprising person has posted the various fonts, typefaces, and logos utilized by the Electric Company during its run.

Road Rage - It's Sticky

True confession time:

Many years ago, I was leaving work after a particularly crappy day. As I was moving up the aisle of the parking lot, a car came cutting across the lot (where there were no cars parked) and nearly broadsided me. I snapped. I took off after the car and pulled up behind her at a traffic light. I slammed the car into park and got out of the car and went up to the other car and began to berate the driver. The girl behind the wheel would not even turn to look at me. It is fairly safe to say that I scared the bejeezus out of her. My tirade was so pronounced that someone coming out of a restaurant next to the traffic light encouraged me to get back into my car. Which I did. It was not one of my finer moments. I don't remember if her car had any bumper stickers.

Flash forward to the present and I read this article in the Washington Post, recounting a study put out by Colorado State University about aggressive drivers. Evidently there is a link between the number of stickers you put on one's car and how aggressive a driver you can be. The study does maintain that the unstuck do get angry as well, but there was a definite correlation to bumper stickers and incidents of road rage.

The study, which appeared in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology, reported that drivers used the stickers to mark their territory (their cars) and they were more likely to defend that territory when they felt is was threatened.

An interesting side bar to this. As a federal employee, I work under the provisions of the Hatch Act, one of the provisions being (from an online training I took recently) that I may not have more than one partisan election sticker on my car. That's nice of them to look out for me in that way.

What Frightens You?

Right now what frightens me is that Tooth No. 19 is a goner. It's coming out as it is cracked, infected, and an all around pain in the mouth. What's coming in its place is an implant, some oral surgery, and a nice hefty price tag (I know how I'm spending my tax surplus check).

Here's a list of phobias (courtesy of the online page-a-day calendar I receive by email every morning). Many of these have to be made up (let's start with the fact that spell check didn't like any of them):

• anthomania - fear of flowers
• balletomania - fear of ballet
• cytheromania - fear of sex
• dromomania - fear of running; roaming
• eleutheromania - fear of freedom
• flagellomania - fear of flogging; beating
• gamomania - fear of marriage; proposing
• hexametromania - fear of writing hexameters
• islomania - fear of islands
• jumbomania - fear of mammoth proportions (or graduates of this university?)
• klopemania - fear of theft
• lypemania - fear of mournfulness
• melomania - fear of music (and the subsets "Mariahmania" and "Madonnamania")
• nostomania - fear of nostalgia
• onomatomania - fear of words; neologisms
• polkamania - fear of dancing polkas (c'mon, who doesn't love a good polka)
• pteridomania - fear of ferns
• rinkomania - fear of ice-skating
• sonnettomania - fear of sonnets
• squandermania - fear of reckless spending (oh, I'm not afraid of it, I'm really good at it)
• timbromania - fear of postage stamps
• uranomania - fear of celestial power
• Whitmania - fear of Walt Whitman
• xenomania - fear of things foreign
• zoomania - fear of animals

Then I received this nugget in my Google Reader about a woman who lives on Staten Island and was afraid of the Verrazano Bridge, once the world's longest suspension bridge. For those of you who aren't familiar with the greater metropolitan NYC area, Staten Island really is an island and you need that bridge to get to Long Island. Then I saw this story in the Poughkeepsie Journal about a planned refurbishment of the Tappan Zee Bridge.

I personally don't like to drive across this bridge, but I am not sure why. It might be the pitch or the fact that you can see through the drains to the water below. I've driven across a lot of bridges. I grew up in New York and that meant bridges (or tunnels - but that's a story for another day). I crossed at least one bridge every day while commuting. When I moved to DC, more water, more bridges (although I didn't cross this bridge for the first time until last fall). For a while, before I moved, I drove across a bridge that was built in the same model as the Minnesota bridge (it was on the Beltway - so it didn't get a lot of traffic, nope). I like bridges, the architecture, the design. I really wanted to cross this bridge when I was in New Orleans and this bridge-tunnel combo is something that I want to do as well.

I am an intelligent person. I understand the bridge is not going to collapse . . .



and yet?

Well We Can't Have a Bridge, How About a Tunnel?

Today is the 29th anniversary of the death of Nelson Rockefeller. (And remember now, say it with me kids, Nelson Rockefeller died of a heart attack at his desk in his office in New York City.) I have previously written about Nelson's dream of a bridge across Long Island Sound. Well, they've gone underground.

Where I lived on Long Island was near where the terminus of the Cross-Sound bridge would have been located. But now, where all that development has now taken place, a Long Island developer has proposed building a tunnel under it all. Not just any tunnel mind you, but what would be the longest tunnel in the world. The price tag currently sits at $10 billion, built with private funding and with no cost to the taxpayer, until they decide they want to use the tunnel. The toll could be as high as $25 per trip. And don't get your hopes up, the tunnel, if approved, still wouldn't be ready until 2025.

Now faithful readers, I think you all know how I feel about traffic. I've lived in areas that rank high on the lists of worst traffic. Having worked in the Rockefeller Archives and having grown up at ground zero for what would have been the bridge to save Long Island, I have to say, please, do something. It's already too late.

I will say that this idea of the longest tunnel in the world won't really do anything about the traffic (I firmly believe that we are already over capacity, you build more roads and we'll fill them up, too). There needs to be less people. In my youth, I used to travel to New Jersey via the Lincoln Tunnel. Without a doubt, every time I would go through it, I would think of the scene (as my mother would do the same) in Stephen King's The Stand, where one of the characters gets out of a plague stricken New York City by climbing across the rooftops of cars stuck in the tunnel. Just last weekend, I had the opportunity to go to the movies. I went by myself to see I am Legend (although I tried to find a date - Mrs. Brave Astronaut stayed at home and urged me to go). Of course, I am not advocating for that scenario.

For the record, I am Legend, is worth your time and money. If you like Will Smith, for it is his movie. I mean it's him (and the dog) for 3/4 of the movie. Sure there's some flashbacks as to how this all happened, but it's all him. And you have to love the post-apocalyptic New York City. The movie is supposed to take place in 2012 (with the plague hitting in 2009) and there is one scene where Smith is pumping out gas to fill up the many cars he has access to. You can see the price sign - $6.35/gallon. Funny.

Of Baseball Note

It is nearly midnight here in Maryland and I have learned that the Chicago Cubs fans are invoking their never ending mantra, "Wait 'til next year." The Cubbies have been swept aside by the Arizona Diamondbacks, who will await the winner of the Philadephia-Colorado series. (This game is currently in the 6th inning and the Rockies have a 1-0 lead over the Phillies.) As I said in my predictions, I wished for the Cubs to make it past the D-Backs, for if it wasn't now, who knows when it might happen? And the Rockies? Well, they are the team to beat. They are on fire.

In the American League, the Red Sox are manhandling the Angels and are one game away from the ALCS. Tomorrow afternoon the two teams will face off in Anaheim. The winner of that series will face the victor of the Yankees-Indians series. Yes, yes, I said the Yankees in four. So now it will have to be five. Yes, the Yankees are 3-11 in postseason games since the collapse against the Red Sox in 2004. But they are heading home to the Bronx and I still believe (wait, isn't that a Mets slogan?). Just in case, I have my laudatory Cleveland post just about ready to go to satisfy the wager I have with Amy in Cleveland. Game three of that series will be tomorrow evening.

What am I doing tomorrow? The Brave Astronaut family is heading up I-95 to visit with the newest member of the Brave Astronaut's extended family. Mrs. Brave Astronaut's sister gave birth to a daughter last week and we are off to ooh and ahh at the new baby. But I'll be sure to check in and report on the baseball tomorrow night.

Our drive tomorrow will take us into Delaware, home of the I-95 bottleneck. This article was forwarded to me by my mother-in-law, as she knows just how much I hate that state and its "highway," which is really just a parking lot and toll collection station.

Monday is Columbus Day and I will take the opportunity to get some paperwork done, finish cataloging my books in Library Thing, and maybe get some art on to the walls.

Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbor's SUV

The Vatican has published its "rules of the road," with the intention of keeping motorists "on the road to salvation, warning drivers against the sins of road rage, abuse of alcohol or even simple rudeness." A Vatican official, Cardinal Renato Martino, told a news conference the Vatican felt it necessary to address the pastoral needs of motorists because driving has become such a big part of contemporary life.

The document, issued from the office for migrants and itinerant people, is called "Guidelines for the Pastoral Care of the Road," and extols the benefits of driving - family outings, getting the sick to the hospital, allowing people to get to work and seeing other cultures.

I'll point out these "new" Commandments come from a guy that drives around in a car standing up, without a seat belt. Nonetheless, follow these or its eternal traffic for you:

The Vatican's Ten Commandments for drivers:

1. You shall not kill.
2. The road shall be for you a means of communion between people and not of mortal harm.
3. Courtesy, uprightness and prudence will help you deal with unforeseen events.
4. Be charitable and help your neighbor in need, especially victims of accidents.
5. Cars shall not be for you an expression of power and domination, and an occasion of sin.
6. Charitably convince the young and not so young not to drive when they are not in a fitting condition to do so.
7. Support the families of accident victims.
8. Bring guilty motorists and their victims together, at the appropriate time, so that they can undergo the liberating experience of forgiveness.
9. On the road, protect the more vulnerable party.
10. Feel responsible toward others.

Unfinished Projects

Last week, I wrote about the Long Island Expressway. Living with it so close to home, literally, and now that my daily commute takes me on a portion of the Capital Beltway (also Interstate 495), I have sat in my fair share of traffic and developed some ideas on how to help.

Faithful readers have already read my rants about traffic - here are the solutions we need. Sure it will take millions of dollars and people will scream, but the long term benefits outweigh the short. Something must be done!

Double decker the roads. The freeways and bridges in California are often double decker roads and they have earthquakes! The East Coast is a little more stable, so why not put another road on top of the existing one? For both roads, it would be very simple. Development has made the further widening of the roads impossible, so go UP. The beauty of the plan is to make one of the roads an "express" with limited access. For the Long Island Expressway, there has even been talk of this (look for the "Urban Legend on the LIE" section. For the express road, have exits at the "major" interchanges (and this will mean something only to those who have been there): The BQE, the Grand Central Parkway, The Van Wyck Expressway, the Clearview Expressway, the Cross-Island Parkway, the Northern State Parkway, the Seaford-Oyster Bay Expressway, Route 110, the Sagitkos Parkway, and at Exit 70.

For the Capital Beltway (as previously noted, also 1-495), the problem becomes a little trickier and definitely more costly, as there are bridges involved not to mention that huge thing we like to call the "mixing bowl." But double decker the road, make it limited access, with exits (again, for locals and exasperated commuters from DC) at I-95 in Maryland, I-270, (somehow over the American Legion Bridge), the George Washington Memorial Parkway, Route 66, I-95 in Virginia, (somehow over the Woodrow Wilson Bridge), I-295, and Route 50.

Alternatively, let's think about this. For years on Long Island, people have suggested building a monorail down the middle of the expressway. Surprisingly, the Long Island Rail Road has been against it! But let's dream here folks. Build some large parking lots on either side of the expressway (as opposed to the parking lot the expressway can be) and make a pedestrian bridge to a station over the expressway where a monorail can run. DC residents can see how this might work while travelling I-66 in Virginia where the Metro runs down the middle of that road. So in DC's case, build a new Metro line around the Beltway (color suggestions for the line?) on the model of the Orange Line that runs out Route 66.

I will be the first to say that if you build more roads, they will just fill up. But these are a couple of pipe dreams that I think could work in a world where community opposition is nil and plenty of funds are readily available. Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller, who governed New York State from 1958 to 1973, had a pipe dream of his own. He wanted to build a bridge across Long Island Sound. An outstanding idea, but those pesky community activist people told him they couldn't. I actually would have lived near the terminus of the Long Island side of the bridge (that whole expressway thing again), and loved the idea. People shout about it every now and then, especially when thoughts of how to evacuate Long Island should something happen in New York City. Um, tough noogies, folks, you're all gonna die, for one must go through New York to get off Long Island. Sigh. It wouldn't hurt to think about it some more, huh? Please?

So another bridge in DC? The area is concluding work on a major renovation of the Wilson Bridge, which included the construction of a new span. And, hey, guess what, they envisioned a light rail across the middle. See? Someone has been listening to me. There are often talks about a new crossing across the Potomac also. But I think the problem with all this talk is, the people doing the talking know they will be long dead before any of this would get built. But they will probably die in a traffic jam on the beltway. It would serve them right.

BTW, this gets an archives tag for a couple of reasons. I used to work at the Rockefeller Archive Center, where the biography of Nelson Rockefeller comes from (in fact, I put it on the web when I served as the webmaster) and the plans for the Long Island Sound Bridge come from the archives of the Suffolk County Planning Department.

It's Memorial Day Weekend - Hurry up and Wait!

The Brave Astronaut family are off this weekend to visit with my father. There is sure to be more cleaning (he moves in two weeks) but we are leaving some time for some Memorial Day fun as well. This will include the Syosset Memorial Day Parade, which I will hope to have some pictures to add to my post on Monday. Over the weekend, I will try to post again on how things are progressing with the cleanup.

Meanwhile we are going to join the throngs of people choking the roads heading for various weekend destinations. Wish us luck!

So What's Your Exit, Honey?

I grew up in the shadow of the Long Island Expressway. When my parents were considering buying the house, they drove over at various times to sit in front of the house to listen to the new "superhighway" that had been recently completed just steps from their new home. They determined the new road was not that loud.

When people would visit, especially during the summer, when windows would be open in our un-air conditioned home, they would come down in the morning, asking, "How do you sleep with that noise?" We would usually respond, "What noise?" The road noise was part of the background and we didn't even hear it anymore.

Going to one of the university centers of the State University of New York, especially one that was frequented by residents of Long Island, one would often introduce yourself by telling what exit you lived off of. I remember one weekend, visiting a friend who was at Oswego State, bumping into a guy several times at a party. We would greet each other with "32!" and "43!"

Living near the expressway gave us some exciting moments as well. I remember a trucker's strike in the late 1970s or early 1980s, when many truckers staged a demonstration on the LIE that slowed the road beyond its normal rush hour crawl. There were the jackknifed tractor trailers (I remember one particularly, a truck carrying canned applesauce) that brought gawkers to look and the inevitable "rubber necking" delays. The LIE was also the scene of the final exits for musician Harry Chapin and director Alan J. Pakula.


On Monday, when I left to return home, I got on the road by about 6:40am, knowing that I needed to be out that early if I had any chance to beat some of the traffic. However, an overnight accident on the Northern State Parkway, which parallels the expressway, changed my plans.



What I had expected to be about a one-hour commute to the George Washington Bridge, took me an hour and a half. And I never even got on the LIE, I road what is known in CB lingo as the "balcony" or the service road that parallels the main road. While I am not in the picture at right (those poor suckers were on the Northern State), everybody else did go over to the LIE causing major backups all morning.

In a future post (which I've already written), I will share with you, my visions for helping the traffic issues on Long Island and in DC as well.

I Can't Win

I have lamented here publicly about the traffic here in the DC area. This week I have been spared from the road warriors, as I have been working downtown and have been taking Metro. Today, I arrived at the station to get on the train, and found one waiting for me. Not unusual, until I realize it's not going anywhere. Cue the PA announcement. "Attention Customers, this train has been instructed to hold at this station due to a "fire situation" at Dupont Circle." The announcement continues to tell us (the train has filled up by now) that trains are holding up and down the Red Line and when they start, trains will single track through four stations around the Dupont Circle Station. (For those of you not from the DC area - you love the Metro, but ride it every day then come talk to me. And don't even get me started about the "untended luggage" at the Rockville station last night.) You can learn about all of these travel woes on the Metro here. So when we finally got moving, we did the slow crawl into the city. My normal twenty minute commute took me an hour. It's a good thing I love my job.

On another unrelated? note, today is the Ides of March, a particularly bad day for Julius Caesar. It's also proving to be a bad day for a few of my Big Dance picks. My Cinderella choices of GWU and Penn have been obliterated and I must have had a brain fade to have picked Stanford. I don't even like Tiger Woods, why would I pick his school? And with time running out, my Marquette pick ain't looking so good either. I mean, geez, it took them eight minutes to score their first basket. And Duke is having trouble with VCU, but that's not necessarily bad. Yes, I picked Duke, but that doesn't mean I like them.

Road Rage In the News

I commute to work every day about 13 miles, primarily using the Capital Beltway. There are some occasions when I can easily see the opportunity to "flip out" on my fellow drivers. We all surely have in our pasts an incident of road rage that we are not proud of. I'm also a "New York" driver, so my tolerance is already lowered. I am really peeved by the driver I refer to as "shoulder suckers." A shoulder sucker is one that will ride the shoulder of a road to avoid traffic and congestion on the main roadway. I will often move to the right lane and position my car half on the shoulder to keep "shoulder suckers" from getting past.

Recently an incident captured the headlines here in DC regarding a woman accused of road rage. A North Carolina woman hurled a McDonald's cup of ice into the car of a fellow driver who had cut her off was sentenced to probation after a hearing in Loudon County, Virginia. The incident took place last July on Interstate 95. No one was injured. The woman is a mother of three, with a husband serving in Iraq, who had planned to go to nursing school. She told the Washington Post, "Now people are going to see me as an angry, road rage, convicted felon. And it really upsets me, I must have been wrong . . . but seriously, God. Lesson learned. Lesson learned is one hour in this place." Gee, ya think?

We spend an inordinate amount of time in our cars. There is certainly going to be more circumstances where these types of events will take place. There are countless websites out there dedicated to road rage, including this one. There is most certainly a level of anonymity that we all enjoy in our cars, but the human factor will eventually come into play for us one day. How will we handle it? I hope to do better than I have reacted in the past.

Hey You! In the Car! Reading Your Laptop While Driving! Yeah, You!

My wife's dream has come true, sort of. For years, my wife believed there should be a system by which one could call the person in the car near to you by dialing their license plate number. Then you could say to them what only the passengers in your car were able to hear previously.

The Washington Post reports that we are one step to "improved communications" with our fellow drivers. A new website, Plate Wire, allows motorists to post the license plate of offensive drivers. The site was started by a Fairfax, Virginia man who hopes to shame people into driving better. However, the problem is there is no way of knowing if the subjects actually see them.
It begs the question, "why are people taking the time to post what is basically a primal scream?" It just makes us feel better, OK? And my son doesn't have to hear that kind of language anymore.

If you prefer the more "intimate contact" with your fellow drivers, there are other ways. GadgetUniverse.com offers the Programmable License Plate Billboard, yours for only $39.95. If you really want to get creative, $199 buys the MobileLED MD-550, which plugs into a car cigarette lighter and comes with a small keyboard that allows you to type any message on a large electronic display board mounted inside your rear window.

Of course police and safety experts caution not to further aggravate the situation. You've got a cell phone - use it. Dial #77, the non-emergency number for the police and report the situation. However, responses will vary. The bird is instantaneous and more gratifying.

Be safe out there on the roads. I might be next to you as I am traveling for Thanksgiving. To the airport tonight to pick up my father, to Wilmington, Delaware tomorrow for the holiday, home on Friday through Annapolis (but God, not to the Mall), and back to the airport on Saturday to drop Dad off to go home. Happy Thanksgiving!

Traffic Sucks

Nobody likes getting stuck in traffic. When I lived in New York, I commuted by car to my job. When I lived in Poughkeepsie and commuted to Westchester County, I drove about 60 miles one way. I could make the trip in about 55 minutes. Yes, that means I might have been exceeding the posted speed limits, but the flow of traffic was such that you could make good time. Granted, in bad weather, or if there was an accident, it would take longer. When I moved to Long Island and was still going to Westchester, it was 48 miles and it took about an hour. More cars, more traffic. However, in both cases, the infrastructure was such that if one road had a problem, there was another that could handle overflow and you could continue on your way.

When I moved to DC, I commuted by Metro from my home in the MD suburbs to downtown DC via the Metro. I was reminded how nice it was to let someone else be in charge of getting me to work, allowing me to read the paper, nap, or just relax on the train. It was very nice. When I got my new job at the National Archives, it was back into the car to be a road warrior again. I was quickly reminded how much I don't understand about DC area roads.

Let's start with the Beltway. It's a circle. There's your first problem. Having a parallel road next to it is an immediate issue. For example, in New York, if you are on the Long Island Expressway and it is slow, you can get off and ride the service road (and play my favorite game - Pace the Truck, but that's another story) or you could hop over to the Northern State Parkway or any one of several other east-west routes. When something goes wrong on the Beltway, you are pretty much hosed. Sure, there are roads that criss cross, but you have to get on them and usually navigate lights and other people who have bailed out, not to mention the people who actually live off these surface roads and don't appreciate the commuter gumming up their path to the local Giant.

Now let's talk about what I will call the ripple effect. On several occasions I have been on my way home, going west on the Outer Loop of the Beltway and I will begin to slow near Georgia Avenue (near the Mormon Temple, you've seen it, it looks like the Emerald City from the Wizard of Oz). The traffic reports (see the next paragraph) tell you there is a problem on I-270 at Shady Grove Road (some 10-15 miles away). However, the traffic has backed up on 270 and is now affecting people trying to get on 270 from the Beltway! Inconceivable!

Traffic reports. I have become a devoted listener of WTOP radio, which has traffic reports "on the 8s." The traffic reports tend to report serious problems first (as they should) and then comment on the major roads around the region. Typically, they will omit a mention of "normal" volume, for example the Outer Loop between New Hampshire Avenue and Connecticut Avenue during the morning rush and the Inner Loop across the same stretch in the evening. I often find myself in a delay that is not explained by the report or cruising at highway speed in an area that has been reported as slow. Inconceivable!

Weather. It is supposed to rain tomorrow. Plan for extra travel time. OK, I expect that. But I don't accept having to plan to double my travel time because it's raining. A few weeks ago, I had a few longer commutes because people were adjusting to daylight savings and were getting used to driving in the dark again. Inconceivable! ("You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.")

I reported here earlier about the US reaching the population milestone of 300 million people and a related report about road gridlock coming up in less than 20 years. Check back soon for my pipe dream plans for helping the DC area get out of traffic and back up to highway speed.

300 Million and Counting

This past week, the population of the United States surpassed the 300 million mark. So now what? We live in a nation that can't support the numbers we have now. I don't have a solution but it makes you wonder when the shortsightedness of the American politician might stop and they begin to realize that ignoring the problems of tomorrow is no longer an option as tomorrow is here.

One interesting sidebar to this story. While note was made of the 300 million mark, I later heard an associated story regarding the impact on transportation. Here in the DC area, they are forecasting that road gridlock will occur in about 25 years. Only with dedicated funds to transportation plans will some breathing room occur.

We have all seen the futuristic movies. Levitating cars and high speed traffic lanes covered with automatic driven vehicles. While that is some time off, something better be done soon. The DC area is trying to do something. Here in Maryland, the Inter-County Connector has been approved and construction may start soon. It is the first step toward what has been termed the "Outer Beltway." The purple line, a new Metro line is also scheduled to be constructed that will alleviate some of the congestion. High Occupancy Toll (HOT) Lanes are being planned for the Beltway in Virginia. HOT lanes allow people to drive in a dedicated lane and pay a graduated toll based on the traffic on the rest of the roadway. Car pools would be allowed to drive in the HOT lanes for a reduced or no cost, driving along would cost you the most, particularly if the road is congested.

Another root problem is the American attachment to their automobile. Until we find a way to make car pooling more palatable to the American commuter, single drivers will still pack the roads every day. My current commute is about fifteen miles. I take the Beltway east (the Inner Loop) in the morning, for the most part without incident. In the afternoon, I go the opposite direction, also usually without delay. The other side however, is usually slammed with traffic. There is usually no reason for the delay, what seasoned commuters simply call, "too many cars, not enough road." Listening to the traffic reports is usually interesting, will you hear about something, or will the traffic stop without explanation.

Another problem with the traffic is there is no good infrastructure for people to take if the Beltway is bad. Surface roads are not capable of handling the increased traffic from people trying to escape the stop and go of the Beltway. It is also noteworthy that "traditional" rush hour has gone the way of the dodo. It used to be that traffic would start at a reasonable hour of 7:00 to 7:30am and be over between 9:00 and 9:30am. But with people moving further and further away from their offices, commuters are hitting the road as early as 4:30-5:00 am and flex time schedules are pushing workday start times to 10:00 or later. Of course this all trickles down to the afternoon rush, which now starts in the 3:00 hour and continues unabated until 8:00pm.

With the increased crush on the roads, a simple car breaking down on the side of the road can cause backups of miles on the Beltway. The other day, I was on my way home and my trip on the Beltway was delayed by nearly 20 minutes because, wait for it, it had rained over Interstate 270 in Rockville, some ten miles from the Beltway. But the traffic to get on I-270 slowed and pushed the delays back onto the Beltway. It is inconceivable how these things occur and somebody better think of something quickly.

In another post, shortly, I'll propose one solution.