ENGLISH FOR CONGRESS POSITION
PAPER (Revised in April 2018)
Washington/Baltimore Regional
Traffic Congestion
In November 2005, I attended the
National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board (TPB)
sponsored a forum titled "What if the Washington Region Grew
Differently?" I was amazed to learn that, other than the recently
constructed Inter-County Connector, there were no new major
highways planned for the Washington area or additional bridges
planned for crossing the Potomac River. These plan
limitations were obvious despite the TPB's forecasts of an
expected 30% population growth in the Washington metropolitan
region by the year 2030. There was much discussion of
transit improvements and HOT toll lanes for existing highway
corridors, but no recognition of the fact that Washington and
Baltimore have no bypass highways planned for interstate coastal
through traffic similar to the I-295 bypass around Richmond and
Petersburg that has already existed for the past 40+years.
Simple short-term transit solutions such as the regional express
bus system now operating in the Denver Metropolitan area were not
even considered. Instead, High Occupancy Toll (HOT) lanes
for the Beltway and other major highways are have been constructed
to speed the wealthy along their way (i.e., "Lexus Lanes") with
everyone else either paying the extortionate tolls or sharing the
increasingly congested adjacent roadway lanes.
Rather than resort to extremely expensive rail transit or
exclusionary road user solutions, there are short term low-cost
express commuter bus alternatives that could and should be
implemented within the next five years to alleviate traffic
congestion and reduce the economic and social costs arising
therefrom. Dedicated bus and HOV lanes such as the Corridor
Cities plan should be constructed or expanded along major
thoroughfares to speed bus and HOV commuters to and from their
places of employment. Firms in major employment centers
should sponsor employer-subsidized express bus service to bring
employees to their work sites from specially designated suburban
and outer suburban commuter parking lots. A computerized
point-to-point origin/destination data base should be developed
for each major employment center to identify the numbers and
locations of employees’ residences and identify convenient parking
areas where they could board express commuter buses for getting to
work. Similarly, a dedicated express bus only (and
emergency vehicle) restricted traffic bridge should be constructed
across the Potomac River at Seneca to provide only emergency
vehicle and express bus service between major employment centers
on both sides of the river as well as also provide express bus
service to and from Dulles Airport. The road network to
Seneca already exists on the Maryland side of the river and would
need to be minimally upgraded to handle the increased bus traffic.
A word of caution, however, must be mentioned about the danger of
exceeding the capacity of Metro's red line by overbuilding high
rise commercial and residential structures that would depend
mostly upon the red line for movement of their occupants. The
recent approval of Marriott's relocation to downtown Bethesda and
the proposed construction of a thirty story office building there
when there are over 10 million square feet of vacant office space
elsewhere in Montgomery County is inexcusable. Both it and the
current competition to have Amazon's new headquarters complex with
an estimated 50,000 new employees also located on the already
overloaded red line a few miles from Bethesda is sheer
madness. The passenger movement capacity of the trains
must be evaluated as well as the ground access and parking
availability in the vicinity of the Metro stations. These
evaluations must become an integral part of the zoning and permit
approval processes. Without the added capacity of an
elevated busway or monorail train line parallel to the red line
between Bethesda and Rockville above route 355, attempting to
transport the 60,000 or more Marriott. NIH, Walter Reed, and
Amazon employees as well as the thousands of commuting through
passengers using only the red line to and from downtown D. C. is
highly likely to cause severe congestion and delays. Planning
for extensions at both ends of Metro's red line to Olney and
Germantown and acquisition of land for future Metro stations also
should be undertaken without further delay.
In the longer term, planning should begin immediately for a
limited access express regional Eastern bypass highway that would
begin at I-95 North of Washington and follow the existing
Laurel-Bowie road corridor to U. S. 50 and from there parallel U.
S. 301 to the Potomac River. It would continue to parallel
to U. S. Route 301 through Northern Virginia until it connects
with the I-295 Bypass North of Richmond. Entrance and
exits should be permitted only at U. S.
50, Maryland Route 5, and U.S. Route 17 in Virginia to
prevent the highway from being overloaded by commuter
traffic. A post and beam bridging scheme with a specially
designed roadway runoff collection and wastewater treatment system
for protecting the Paxtuxent Wildlife Refuge along its route must
be incorporated into the project.
The Washington/Baltimore region also desperately needs a
restricted access bypass highway to route through traffic from the
Northeast toward the South. It should start at I-95 a few
miles South of the Susquehanna River bridge and run westward in an
arc toward the Monocacy River South of Westminster. It would then
turn southward East of Frederick before crossing the Potomac
River into Virginia near the Point of Rocks bridge. From
there it should run South on the West side of Leesburg and follow
the U. S. 15 and U. S. 17 corridor southward until rejoining I- 95
South of Fredricksburg. Entrances and exits should be
permitted only at I-83 and I-70 in Maryland and I-66 and U. S. 17
in Virginia to prevent commuter traffic from overloading the
roadway. It would carry through interstate traffic around
the Baltimore/Washington region similar to Interstate Highways 278
and 287 in New Jersey. These highways are segments of an
outer "Beltway" running in an arc through central and Northern New
Jersey from the Verrazano Narrows Bridge over the Hudson River
south of New York City into New York state connecting with the
Tappan Zee Bridge over the Hudson River North of the city.
Finally, recognition should be made that there are no rest rooms
in the Metro stations or along the Beltways and major access
highways either in the Baltimore or Washington Metro areas.
With frequent hours-long delays from major traffic
accidents, weather disruptions, etc, it is inhuman to subject
travelers on the region's highways or rail transit systems to the
anguish of not having these facilities available when they are
urgently needed. Many more highway rest areas need to
be established around the Beltways and along the region's
interstate highways along with portable toilets being placed every
quarter mile elsewhere along these highways for emergency use only
during major traffic backups. Similarly, until rest room
facilities could be designed and built into the Metro stations,
portable toilet facilities such as those used at construction
sites for patron use should be placed at the ends of the platforms
in every Metro station. The Metro riders' fare cards could be
charged a dollar for each use by mounting fare card readers or
coin locks for patron access on the entrance doors of these
facilities.