Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.twt.news From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: Gridlock around the clock Date: Sun, 15 Nov 92 16:56:27 EST Message-ID: \SE A \HD Gridlock around the clock \SH On many streets, rush hour never ends \BY Janet Naylor \CR THE WASHINGTON TIMES Ah, the weekend. Time to kick back, take a leisurely drive to a shopping mall or visit friends across the Potomac, with thoughts of the nightmarish daily commute far from your mind. Forget it. As more and more area residents can attest, rush hour does not necessarily end at 7 p.m. and weekend traffic jams are not confined to holidays and the beach season. "It's like rush-hour traffic all day long" is how Randy Skovrinski of Sterling describes Route 7 near Tysons Corner on weekends. In the good old days - before the 1980s growth boom, before the one-passenger car was standard - traffic on major area roads showed definite peaks around the morning and evening rush hours. But recent studies and anecdotal evidence suggest that those mountainous peaks of traffic at rush hour have filled in, creating a plateau of constant congestion. A 1991 survey by the Virginia Department of Transportation, for example, showed that Route 7 in Tysons Corner carried 61,100 cars on a typical weekday. On weekends, 58,300 cars passed the same stretch of road. "Tysons Corner is always backed up, any time of the night or day," said Mr. Skovrinski, a self-described homebody who rides a van pool to work at the Department of Energy. "I usually go to Fair Oaks Mall instead. It's much less traffic." Route 7, even where it is six lanes wide, is almost universally despised by motorists, but it is by no means the only road seeing a round-the-clock rush. Maryland transportation officials - pointing to laws requiring that roads be able to handle traffic from new developments - claim to have it a little better than in Virginia. But they admit that Saturday shoppers clog many areas, especially along Route 1 in Laurel. "This is the price we pay to live in highly urbanized areas," said Maj Shakib, assistant district engineer with the Maryland State Highway Administration. The crunch has created legions of angry, tired office workers who can no longer cruise home at 8 p.m. after pulling overtime and parents who are reduced to weekend errand boys with most of their Saturdays eaten up by short trips from suburb to suburb. Local and national surveys now show that many commuters resort to running errands during their lunch hour or during lulls in the workday. "That's your two-career families, where the working mother is dashing out at lunch to buy the pair of socks," said Mary Anne Reynolds, a spokeswoman for Virginia's Transportation Department. The Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments has examined off-peak traffic problems only on a case-by-case basis, said Ron Kirby, the council's transportation director. "We haven't done much more than that, to be quite honest," he said. "This weekend [and] off-peak congestion is a relatively recent phenomenon. . . . I think it's something we're going to have to look into to a greater degree." Peak traffic, if it can be called that, starts at 9 a.m. Saturday at Tysons Corner "and the rush doesn't stop until 10 o'clock at night," said Joan Morris, another spokeswoman for Virginia's Transportation Department. "On the weekdays we have much more predictable patterns of people going from point to point," Ms. Morris said. "On Saturday, everything goes." Some causes are obvious: Nighttime and midday delays are primarily due to roadwork, while hordes of shoppers bring weekend backups. But finding an overall solution can be a problem, especially when money is tight. Different congestion areas prompt different solutions. Mall traffic can be eased by changing signal patterns, as has been done in some areas in Northern Virginia. Large, portable message boards are an increasingly popular way to warn motorists of problems and suggest alternate routes. Other problems run deeper. While many roads were planned to get traffic in and out of the city, more traffic is moving between suburbs than ever before. The Council of Governments estimates that more than 75 percent of all jobs will be in the suburbs by 2010. "The problem is we just have the Beltway and the suburban sprawl has gone way beyond the Beltway," said Mike Zezeski, chief of the travel development and support division of Maryland's Highway Administration. Plans for suburb-to-suburb routes - Maryland's east-west Inter-County Connector, the north-south Beltway eastern bypass and Virginia's Fairfax County Parkway - are on the books but have been delayed by the recession or stalled. But most politicians and planners predict that demographic realities will force their construction at some point this decade. Traffic congestion may become more than just a headache. It could also become a costly burden as the region struggles to comply with the federal Clean Air Act, since vehicles in stop-and-go traffic emit more pollutants than those traveling 30 to 55 mph. But the federal government frowns on new roads as a congestion solution, leaving local jurisdictions the tough job of trying to coax people out of their cars and into car pools and mass transit. Increasingly, shopping-mall builders look for locations near mass-transit facilities or bus routes, Mr. Zezeski said. "In the old days, they never looked at that." But while planners discuss ways to encourage weekend transit and car pooling, most admit it will be difficult to get motorists to cut down on driving alone. "We just have to change our ways around," Mr. Shakib said. "We can't just keep building highways and expect it will all go away. We're going to have a very tough time breaking the habit." ****MAP/BOX THE NEVER-ENDING RUSH HOUR Area traffic patterns show road congestion is no longer limited to morning and afternoon rush hours. The trouble spots include: VIRGINIA 1. Route 7: Near Tysons Corner is the worst, but traffic is slow most of the time through most of Fairfax County. 2. Interstate 95: Midday and nighttime construction delays are common from the Beltway to Occoquan. Weekend traffic is worst from Springfield to Potomac Mills. 3. Interstate 66: Best avoided on weekends between the Beltway and Route 50. Some weekday construction delays also. 4. Interstate 395: Especially bad near Springfield. 5. Route 29: Weekend crunch from Centreville inbound. MARYLAND 6. Route 1: Bad in Laurel on weekends, due to numerous shopping areas, and near the University of Maryland in College Park, especially afternoons when classes are in. 7. Route 355: Near White Flint Mall in Rockville and Montgomery Village Mall in Gaithersburg on weekends. 8. Old Georgetown Road: Near Montgomery Mall on weekends. 9. Route 202 and the Capital Beltway: Near Landover Mall on weekends. 10. Route 50: Midday and nighttime construction delays, especially near Route 3/301. 11. Route 193: Especially in the Greenbelt and Langley Park areas. This article is copyright 1992 The Washington Times. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM