Sprawl and Crawl

391 days ago - As Metro continues to take delivery of new rail cars and puts them into service, the congestion experienced by rush hour (peak time) commuters should be alleviated or at least reduced. As has always been the case, the distribution of these new cars to the various lines is the result of some political and financial maneuvering by the local jurisdictions. This time there seems to be a broader distribution and that’s a good thing.

399 days ago - One of the hottest bits of technology being developed to help drivers know about congestion and resultant speeds on a given stretch of roadway involves signals from cell phones. We have been watching this for some time and have noted that one of the test areas is along Interstate 95 near Baltimore. The information is gathered by sensing cell phone signals in cars as they pass from one “cell” to the next. The software algorithms calculate how many cell phones (vehicles) there are in a given stretch of road and how fast they are moving.

406 days ago - I guess it’s better to hear estimates of how bad things are going to be and then find out they aren’t. It sure beats the alternative. All of the doom and gloom about holiday traveling this Thanksgiving seems to have been based on bad information or on a self-serving scramble to get headlines. With so many electronic toll collections systems set up around the country, it would seem that estimating the number of people actually on the roads would be easier than ever.

408 days ago - A week or so ago I was driving up the George Washington Parkway and passed the 14th Street Bridge. Ahead was the bridge that takes the parkway over a little canal that leads to the marina there. For decades local law enforcement officials had referred to this bridge as the “humpbacked bridge” as in: “Respond to an accident, southbound on the parkway at the humpbacked bridge.” It was code, it was a secret language and only a few people knew it. I was part of the club because of my many, many years as a traffic reporter.

408 days ago - This region is apparently getting serious about issues related to traffic safety.

413 days ago - Sometimes it’s possible to overplan for delays. A friend of mine was leaving out of Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall on Tuesday and planned to get to the airport four hours early. She did this in anticipation of not being able to find parking in the long-term lots, waiting for the shuttle to get to the terminal, checking luggage and, of course, the security checkpoint.

413 days ago - A friend was flying out of Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport on Tuesday, heading for the Midwest to spend Thanksgiving with family.

414 days ago - This should be an interesting week. A good number of us will be hitting the highways at some point to head out of town. The interstates by this afternoon and into tomorrow will be jam-packed. That means the streets downtown will look increasingly like a scene out of the movie “The Omega Man.” We might even be able to find a legal parking space or two. There’s always that trade-off when people are coming and going. Of course, Friday morning around 5 will look like the middle of rush hour as people rush to the stores on Black Friday. This would be an interesting time for the local jurisdictions to do traffic counts.

415 days ago - This may be too “inside baseball” but there is a real bidding war taking place that might be of interest to those who use Global Positioning System satellite technology.

415 days ago - There is a reason that many of the traffic light systems tend to work against drivers instead of for them. According to new research, much of the investments in traffic control systems were made in the 1960s and 1970s. Even though many of the systems have been upgraded over the years. researchers say that the amount of computing power needed to truly “control” traffic is not in place. There are simply too many variables that need to be inputted for most systems to keep up with the higher volumes of traffic.

418 days ago - When I was a little boy, my family lived in Boulder, Colo. During that time, there was a stretch of a connector ramp along the highway to Denver that rose high into the sky and just stopped. It was like one of those pieces of road that the “Dukes of Hazzard” or “Smokey and the Bandit” used to fly over although neither one of those shows or movies had been created yet. It was a thing of wonder and endless fantasy for a boy in first or second grade. My Dad told me that the state had run out of money and couldn’t finish it. Even at a young age, I found that very strange; why would a state start to build something if it didn’t know whether or not it could finish it? Wasn’t that wasting money? Do you think they’d let me ride my bike up there and just look down? Many of you probably already know where this is leading. … I had a great sense of deja vu as I read William Flook’s piece Thursday about the Dulles Rail project going forward without being certain of federal funding. Instead of the Rocky Mountains, though, the backdrop was a bunch of mismatched office buildings in Tysons Corner.

418 days ago - When my kids were just starting to drive I wanted to put a sign in the back window to alert other drivers that they were still new to this whole driving thing.

420 days ago - On Monday, we talked about some of the things to do to get your car ready for traveling this Thanksgiving. A lot of people will be flying as well, and that means a wholly different set of issues. One of the airline industry groups is estimating that the number of people flying over the Thanksgiving holiday will be 4 percent higher than last year. The solution, as always, is to get to the airport two or three hours early so you can stand in security lines and still make your flight.