How do Hogan and Jealous compare on transportation?

with modern electronic communications, for paper pushing jobs, why anyone should have to commute is a mystery

Agreed.

Short term, to try to relieve some of the pressure on 270 and the beltway, I believe that some advertising for MARC in the Frederick/Urbana area could easily pay dividends. No this is not a cure all, but having the ticket sales to show there is demand would make it easier to argue for increased transit service. Unfortunately 270 from Germantown to Frederick if not all the way to Hagerstown along 70 is running near if not above design capacity even during non-rush hours. Note that increasing service on MARC will require demonstrating there is demand for the increased service as it will cost a similar magnitude as adding lanes to 270. This is in large part because impacting the ability of CSX to move freight on that line is a non-starter.

My opposition to widening 270 south of Gaithersburg and 495 is due to the fact that all those people who drive in on those highways need to get off somewhere, and the surface streets I am familiar with (Connecticut, River, Georgia) are already full during rush hour. I have seen the lights at those roads back traffic up the off ramps and impede the flow on the beltway.

I am currently in the unenviable situation of for work driving my work truck from our shop in Gaithersburg all the way to Georgetown to perform my work (and I require the equipment on that truck to do my job). Any reduction in the number of cars on the road makes everyone else’s life easier.

My opposition to widening 270 south of Gaithersburg and 495 is due to the fact that all those people who drive in on those highways need to get off somewhere, and the surface streets I am familiar with (Connecticut, River, Georgia) are already full during rush hour. I have seen the lights at those roads back traffic up the off ramps and impede the flow on the beltway.

Exactly. There is no sense in building bigger traffic pipes to pump more cars into the center when the core is already thoroughly congested.

Widening 270 north of Gaithersburg will simply encourage developers to add to the sprawl along the corridor. Any new road capacity will be overwhelmed by new traffic volume the moment it opens.

I know I sound like a broken record, but the fact is that we are now a metro area of 10 million people. More cars are a liability inside the beltway, and in an increasing number of places outside the beltway. Too many people have not yet adjusted to this reality. They think pouring more asphalt will solve the problem. It won't.

You have to drive for work, and that's fine. But we have to start getting commuters out of their cars if they're coming into the central city. We need to encourage people to get out of their cars for shorter, non-work trips, which means emphasizing mixed use neighborhoods. And we should be encouraging people to live closer to their jobs -- to trade the 30 mile commute on clogged arterial roads for a two or three mile commute on neighborhood streets.

My standard comment, especially to younger people looking for their first house, is to draw a circle with a radius of five miles around their job, and look really, really hard within that area. My other standard comment is that the best thing we could do in the long run to ease congestion would be to voucher the schools so that toxic public schools would no longer chase so many people to the far suburbs to find a decent school district.

In the short run, the most important simple thing we could do is to create more places to cross 270, the beltway, 66, 395 and a number of non-interstate arterial roads. We have far too many limited access commuter sewers that are barriers to lateral movement. This adds immensely to traffic congestion while degrading the neighborhoods through which they run.

They think pouring more asphalt will solve the problem. It won't.

If used with forethought more asphalt could help. But it is no where near the amount needed to widen arterial roads. I am thinking things like adding 80 feet of left turn lanes to all four sides of the intersection of Bradley and Wilson. Getting rid of the left turn from south bound Conn. to Plyers Mill forcing all those people to use an improved Howard to Summit for a jug handle turn might improve both North and South bound traffic in Kensington. Kensington also needs improved pedestrian (and bicycle) crossings of Conn. especially north or south of the business district.

Forethought is the key word. Politicians tend to oil the squeaky wheel. In the commuter wars, the squeakiest wheel tends to be long distance commuters stuck twice a day in purgatory on 270, 66, and the other chronically clogged arterial roads.

The howl goes up, "Fix this mess."

The pols look for a quick fix and say, "We'll add more traffic lanes." The pols can now say they've "done something," which gets them through another couple of election cycles -- even if the new lanes aren't actually added for ten years, if ever.

Meanwhile, the developers say, "They're widening the road, so we can build even further out." And the cycle continues, ever downward.

I'm not opposed to building new roads on two conditions. First, the new lanes shouldn't be allowed to seriously degrade existing, closer-in neighborhoods. These neighborhoods are the long-term solutions. They are not impediments to be paved over for the convenience of long distance commuters. I have a heavy presumption against taking shoulders and sidewalks, tree plats, on-street parking in neighborhood business districts, and front yards, all to cram another lane through for commuter traffic. In addition, any road that is being commuterized in a residential area should be built with, at least, sidewalks adequate for both bikes and pedestrians, and with plenty of crossing places at walkable/bikeable distances so that neighborhoods aren't sliced apart by uncrossable roads.

As a practical matter, there are darn few places inside the beltway where this can be achieved.

Secondly, the suburban areas that are still building out should avoid repeating the mistakes of the last generation. Build mixed use communities from the ground up. Plan for multi-modal transportation options from the ground up. Don't scatter shopping centers and office parks, surrounded by huge parking lots, willy-nilly across the countryside on the assumption that everyone will drive everywhere. No more Tyson's. Build on the assumption that, 20 years from now, today's edge city will be as dense as Bethesda or Springfield or McLean. Zone residential development, including mixed income housing, within walking, biking, and easy neighborhood bus range of the commercial districts. Build a rational bike network in from the start, when it's cheap and easy to do, as opposed to trying to retrofit later after traffic is a disaster and fixes are expensive.

But all of this requires that the pols resist the impulse to pander to the squeaky wheel. Think ahead. But pols aren't very good at that.

I feel sorry for people who have to commute from Urbana or Haymarket into DC every day. But I'm only sorry up to a point. Most of those people are relatively recent arrivals. They bought out there knowing that the traffic situation is a disaster. They bought the problem. They should own their own choices. And they shouldn't demand that inner ring neighborhoods, which are better places to live, be degraded to mitigate their mistake.

You have me thinking, sphinx. There are apartments right next to my work location. Right now, I’m living with my mother about 36 road miles away from work, or rather, I own the house and she lives with me. So maybe, if these apartments are age-compatible (I’m currently 51), I will move into one of them after she passes from the scene and I’ve paid off the house. Then I could literally walk to work. I would want to keep the car to visit relatives and friends outside of town, however.

I actually think it would take a few months for the capacity to be filled and overrun, but I agree, it will happen. BTW, if you really want to get people to take the train, try more modest improvements to I-270, such as 8 lanes from Germantown to Frederick for those who actually MUST drive, funded by tolls imposed ALONG THE ENTIRE CORRIDOR FROM THE BELTWAY TO I-70. Spot improvements along the rest of the corridor can be funded that way, also. People will eventually find buses and trains, if they’re efficient enough, more appealing that paying 15 cents or so per mile during rush hour. Of course, federal permission would be required for the tolling regime.

The increased ridership on the transit modes will hopefully translate to lower taxpayer subsidies for them as well.

They are connecting the two stubs of Watkins Mill Road near Montgomery Village across I-270 and adding an exit there, so that’s a start. They will need to go further and make the road more like the Jones Falls Expressway in downtown Baltimore, where you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting an overpass crossing the freeway.

‘They must have some idea’: Residents want more details about proposed widening of Beltway and I-270 (8/23)

Moving is a hassle when a job changes. I understand that, and I might accept a long distance commute in that situation. BUT: if I worked in DC and took a job in Baltimore, would I move? Probably, if I thought the job was permanent. But again, if I lived in College Park and took a job in Tysons or further out along the Dulles Corridor, would I move?

There's a psychological oddity that comes into play at this point. People live in College Park and take a job in Tysons … and think, "I'm still a Washingtonian. I don't need to move, I just need to get across town." From there it's a short step to, "It's my inherent right as a Great American to get across town quickly, because a fast commute is right there in the constitution. So why can't those &(%*#&+#@! politicians get the &(%*#&+#@! beltway fixed?" And never mind that it would be closer and faster to drive up to Baltimore.

My advice, as always, is to live within five miles of your job. Life doesn't always work out that way, but if we could get more people thinking in those terms, it would get an awful lot of people off the arterial roads. Living close to work should be the default option. We need to concentrate on building neighborhoods that make it an attractive option for more people.

I think my current job has become pretty permanent for me, sine there are few private sector opportunities for a 51-year-old, thanks to corporate youth worship.

Group organizing to oppose I-270 toll lanes (9/23)

Could the Parks System Use Its Land as Leverage in I-270, Beltway Project? (9/12)

“How do Hogan and Jealous compare on transportation?”

Hogan understands what the word means.