Today is a big day for drivers on Interstate 66 out in Manassas. Today is the day that those two new lanes in each direction between Route 234 Business and the Route 234 Bypass opened to traffic. One of those lanes is a regular lane and the other is HOV-2. The real beauty is that the median has been reserved to add transit or to allow for the segregation of the HOV lanes like they have on Interstates 95 and 395. After all, this is the only way that HOV really worked without constant enforcement. Enjoy it while you can, though. The next phase the widening of the two-mile stretch from the Route 234 Bypass to Route 29 in Gainesville gets under way in the spring.

Sin City monorail

We’ve heard a lot of arguments for turning some grounded or tunneled rail projects around here into ones using monorail. I was so intrigued by the whole concept that I went out to Las Vegas to ride the system and talk to the people in charge of it.

I found there a system that was heavily subsidized by the casinos that built it. The casinos could afford the investment because of the high rate of return they could make off of each and every person who came in off the streets (or monorail). Even so, the Las Vegas monorail had just raised its fares from $3 to $5 to make up operating losses. It turns out that they may have killed the goose that lays the golden eggs by doing so. A national credit firm has downgraded the $650 million in bonds used to pay for construction of the Las Vegas monorail from “BB” to “CCC,” or “junk.” The system, seen by many as the shining example for monorail in the U.S., now has a daily ridership of less than 20,000 and could have trouble making bond payments beginning in 2008. This may also doom the end-game plan of extending the single track out to the airport, which was seen by many as the only way the system could survive.

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Intercoms are Deafening

Ralph asks: “Why are Metro train passengers constantly exposed to the eardrum-shattering and abusive alarms on the Metro train intercoms (on the Blue Line, at least)? The sound pressure level of some of the car intercoms is way above the threshold of pain. It seems that the train operators always want to key their microphones just when the train needs to slow down on approach to a station or a curve and the alarm invariably sounds mid-sentence.”

It does seem to happen much more than it should. I can only imagine that the need to open the mic coincides with the crossing or entering of certain areas. It seems to me that a noise-canceling microphone would solve a lot of the problems, but I can only imagine what some consultant would tell Metro it would cost to make the change.

Questions, comments, random musings? Write to Steve@ Sprawland Crawl.com.