Widening 355 in MoCo

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The lights on 355 suck. I can’t make more than two at a time it doesn’t help that sooo many people are on their phones. I watched a woman FaceTiming today near Georgetown pike. The car behind her didn’t care, he was texting! If you really look, nearly everyone is a distracted driver. That and poor light signaling causes major delays.

Why are you all so wedded to commuting and being a prisoner in your cars? Why aren't you lobbying your local government, showing up at planning commission meetings etc to lobby for the office space and amenities you need?

You realize that the “housing first” policies and poor job environment, including poor infrastructure- particularly road infrastructure- means that there are no businesses with jobs to fill that office space. You want less people who live here to commute long distances then there needs to be job creation here.

Job creation? The jobs already exist, they just aren't distributed correctly. DC is chock full of people commuting here from outside. The daytime population of DC doubles during working hours. Hundreds of thousands of people commute into DC from MoCo, PG, Arlington, Fairfax etc. When I walk my morning or afternoon commute Roughly 65-70% of the license plates I see are MD plates, 25-30% VA plates, and it's only the tiny remainder that are either actual DC commuters or out-of-state tourists.

Those hundreds of thousands of people - they should be working in MoCo, PG, Arlington, Fairfax instead of DC. They should be lobbying their local government leaders to improve their own infrastructure, and to attract businesses to their own zip codes rather than sitting in congested rush hour traffic trying to get into DC. They should be lobbying for their own walkability and bike lanes. But instead they cling to their cookie cutter subdivisions, their strip malls, their antiquated zoning models that put miles between residents and businesses, with barely any sidewalks or bike lanes to get around on if you did want to bike, walk or scooter as tens of thousands of DC residents do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:traffic congestion is a function a terrible land use planning. Not road network necessarily. Widening major roads always leads to MORE traffic as more people will start using again.
-A professional urban planner

People/commuters are blood and roads along with transit are a circulatory system. If you don't build more roads the existing system will literally burst.

Adding more lanes increases overall capacity and allows more people to move throughout a region.

Now, what actually needs to happen is more Business needs to be located in PG county and Frederick so the road network is actually utilized in both directions.

The fallacy of this region is most of the commuting destinations are in the North West Quadrant instead of equally spread out in the other 3 quadrant areas.

Reducing the amount of space that commuters need in order to move throughout the region also adds capacity- you can fit many more people on a bus or a train than in a car that takes up the same amount of space.

This makes zero sense. Absolutely zero. Removing capacity does not increase capacity. How foolish and a clear example of people thinking that they are too smart for their own good.

A bus that fits 100 people in the same space as three cars that fit 15 people is reducing capacity?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:traffic congestion is a function a terrible land use planning. Not road network necessarily. Widening major roads always leads to MORE traffic as more people will start using again.
-A professional urban planner

People/commuters are blood and roads along with transit are a circulatory system. If you don't build more roads the existing system will literally burst.

Adding more lanes increases overall capacity and allows more people to move throughout a region.

Now, what actually needs to happen is more Business needs to be located in PG county and Frederick so the road network is actually utilized in both directions.

The fallacy of this region is most of the commuting destinations are in the North West Quadrant instead of equally spread out in the other 3 quadrant areas.

Reducing the amount of space that commuters need in order to move throughout the region also adds capacity- you can fit many more people on a bus or a train than in a car that takes up the same amount of space.

This makes zero sense. Absolutely zero. Removing capacity does not increase capacity. How foolish and a clear example of people thinking that they are too smart for their own good.

A bus that fits 100 people in the same space as three cars that fit 15 people is reducing capacity?

Lane reductions are reducing capacity.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:traffic congestion is a function a terrible land use planning. Not road network necessarily. Widening major roads always leads to MORE traffic as more people will start using again.
-A professional urban planner

People/commuters are blood and roads along with transit are a circulatory system. If you don't build more roads the existing system will literally burst.

Adding more lanes increases overall capacity and allows more people to move throughout a region.

Now, what actually needs to happen is more Business needs to be located in PG county and Frederick so the road network is actually utilized in both directions.

The fallacy of this region is most of the commuting destinations are in the North West Quadrant instead of equally spread out in the other 3 quadrant areas.

Reducing the amount of space that commuters need in order to move throughout the region also adds capacity- you can fit many more people on a bus or a train than in a car that takes up the same amount of space.

This makes zero sense. Absolutely zero. Removing capacity does not increase capacity. How foolish and a clear example of people thinking that they are too smart for their own good.

A bus that fits 100 people in the same space as three cars that fit 15 people is reducing capacity?

There is already subway running just adjacent to 355 for public transportation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:traffic congestion is a function a terrible land use planning. Not road network necessarily. Widening major roads always leads to MORE traffic as more people will start using again.
-A professional urban planner

People/commuters are blood and roads along with transit are a circulatory system. If you don't build more roads the existing system will literally burst.

Adding more lanes increases overall capacity and allows more people to move throughout a region.

Now, what actually needs to happen is more Business needs to be located in PG county and Frederick so the road network is actually utilized in both directions.

The fallacy of this region is most of the commuting destinations are in the North West Quadrant instead of equally spread out in the other 3 quadrant areas.

Reducing the amount of space that commuters need in order to move throughout the region also adds capacity- you can fit many more people on a bus or a train than in a car that takes up the same amount of space.

This makes zero sense. Absolutely zero. Removing capacity does not increase capacity. How foolish and a clear example of people thinking that they are too smart for their own good.

A bus that fits 100 people in the same space as three cars that fit 15 people is reducing capacity?

The most common bus in the Ride On fleet has a capacity for about 30 riders. The largest bus for the DASH service is about 60 riders.

Average daily traffic volume on 355 is about 50,000 cars on 6 travel lanes. Assuming that each car only has one person means that on an average day (including Sunday), each lane on 355 carries 8,300 people (at minimum) in a car.

Removing one lane and giving to exclusive BRT bus service would require about 140 completely full buses to capacity to run in that one lane to match the throughput. That is basically 6 buses per hour running 24 hours a day. Or one completely full to capacity BRT bus running every 10 minutes, 24 hours a day, every day.

Hopefully you have a better explanation for your ridiculous ideas that removing capacity is not removing capacity.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:traffic congestion is a function a terrible land use planning. Not road network necessarily. Widening major roads always leads to MORE traffic as more people will start using again.
-A professional urban planner

People/commuters are blood and roads along with transit are a circulatory system. If you don't build more roads the existing system will literally burst.

Adding more lanes increases overall capacity and allows more people to move throughout a region.

Now, what actually needs to happen is more Business needs to be located in PG county and Frederick so the road network is actually utilized in both directions.

The fallacy of this region is most of the commuting destinations are in the North West Quadrant instead of equally spread out in the other 3 quadrant areas.

Reducing the amount of space that commuters need in order to move throughout the region also adds capacity- you can fit many more people on a bus or a train than in a car that takes up the same amount of space.

This makes zero sense. Absolutely zero. Removing capacity does not increase capacity. How foolish and a clear example of people thinking that they are too smart for their own good.

A bus that fits 100 people in the same space as three cars that fit 15 people is reducing capacity?

The most common bus in the Ride On fleet has a capacity for about 30 riders. The largest bus for the DASH service is about 60 riders.

Average daily traffic volume on 355 is about 50,000 cars on 6 travel lanes. Assuming that each car only has one person means that on an average day (including Sunday), each lane on 355 carries 8,300 people (at minimum) in a car.

Removing one lane and giving to exclusive BRT bus service would require about 140 completely full buses to capacity to run in that one lane to match the throughput. That is basically 6 buses per hour running 24 hours a day. Or one completely full to capacity BRT bus running every 10 minutes, 24 hours a day, every day.

Hopefully you have a better explanation for your ridiculous ideas that removing capacity is not removing capacity.

So widening 355 by one lane in each direction would allow about 15,000 more people per day to use it with zero impact on that dreaded “congestion”.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why don't we finish up the Brookville bypass before we start expanding another road in this County.

Maybe we are capable of doing more than one thing at a time?

I don't beleive we are

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:traffic congestion is a function a terrible land use planning. Not road network necessarily. Widening major roads always leads to MORE traffic as more people will start using again.
-A professional urban planner

Yes, people use roads because they get utility from them. They want to drive their car somewhere because it is more pleasant than riding a smelly bus and lugging your bags up and down the stairs. I have lived in MoCo for 30 years, and the "urban planners" have continued to try to force people to live the proscribed lifestyle by making the roads miserable (no increases while the population increases) but most people like their suburban lifestyle. Get used to it.

[Anonymous]

As long as we get interchanges on 355 from the exit at the Beltway up through Urbana.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How many people use busses to shop at the big box stores on 355.. I would have to walk to a ride on stop (which does not run with any frequency), ride a ride on to 355.wait for a second bus, rude to store and reverse to go home. Or just take my car.

You realize that in other parts of the world, people actually walk and bike to do their shopping, right? It is only in the US where fat, lazy Americans toodle around in carbon spewing boxes to get their errands done.

This is true but we plowed under our dense cities in the 1950's in order to rebuild them as a suburban/exurban hellscapes. The solution is to destroy all SFH's in the suburbs and force people to move into high rises.

Democrats' utopia/dream for everyone:

I will ask again, please cite a single instance where widening a road has had the effect of reducing congestion on said road.

Here’s a better example. Having reasonably wide parallel avenues creates a resilient road network that allows for higher density development that you presumably want. You have multiple parallel avenues and you have Manhattan. You have just two and you have the Wilson-Clarendon corridor in Arlington.

I would instead ask you for a single example of where in the world you had just one at-grade avenue that was about to serve as a foundational backbone for the types of density you want.

The only way the one road example works is with grade separated highways. So I’m scratching my head why the county is intentionally focusing on density along 355 (unless they plan to build a parallel road(s)) and not 270.

The County claims to be tying development to metro stops. So they are chasing along the red line, which runs along 355.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The lights on 355 suck. I can’t make more than two at a time it doesn’t help that sooo many people are on their phones. I watched a woman FaceTiming today near Georgetown pike. The car behind her didn’t care, he was texting! If you really look, nearly everyone is a distracted driver. That and poor light signaling causes major delays.

Why are you all so wedded to commuting and being a prisoner in your cars? Why aren't you lobbying your local government, showing up at planning commission meetings etc to lobby for the office space and amenities you need?

You realize that the “housing first” policies and poor job environment, including poor infrastructure- particularly road infrastructure- means that there are no businesses with jobs to fill that office space. You want less people who live here to commute long distances then there needs to be job creation here.

Job creation? The jobs already exist, they just aren't distributed correctly. DC is chock full of people commuting here from outside. The daytime population of DC doubles during working hours. Hundreds of thousands of people commute into DC from MoCo, PG, Arlington, Fairfax etc. When I walk my morning or afternoon commute Roughly 65-70% of the license plates I see are MD plates, 25-30% VA plates, and it's only the tiny remainder that are either actual DC commuters or out-of-state tourists.

Those hundreds of thousands of people - they should be working in MoCo, PG, Arlington, Fairfax instead of DC. They should be lobbying their local government leaders to improve their own infrastructure, and to attract businesses to their own zip codes rather than sitting in congested rush hour traffic trying to get into DC. They should be lobbying for their own walkability and bike lanes. But instead they cling to their cookie cutter subdivisions, their strip malls, their antiquated zoning models that put miles between residents and businesses, with barely any sidewalks or bike lanes to get around on if you did want to bike, walk or scooter as tens of thousands of DC residents do.

Hmmm…pp…the jobs are in DC because lawyers, trade associations, and the federal government all do business there!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As long as we get interchanges on 355 from the exit at the Beltway up through Urbana.

Again, what will happen to the thousands of businesses and residences that currently line this roadway?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How many people use busses to shop at the big box stores on 355.. I would have to walk to a ride on stop (which does not run with any frequency), ride a ride on to 355.wait for a second bus, rude to store and reverse to go home. Or just take my car.

You realize that in other parts of the world, people actually walk and bike to do their shopping, right? It is only in the US where fat, lazy Americans toodle around in carbon spewing boxes to get their errands done.

This is true but we plowed under our dense cities in the 1950's in order to rebuild them as a suburban/exurban hellscapes. The solution is to destroy all SFH's in the suburbs and force people to move into high rises.

Democrats' utopia/dream for everyone:

I will ask again, please cite a single instance where widening a road has had the effect of reducing congestion on said road.

Here’s a better example. Having reasonably wide parallel avenues creates a resilient road network that allows for higher density development that you presumably want. You have multiple parallel avenues and you have Manhattan. You have just two and you have the Wilson-Clarendon corridor in Arlington.

I would instead ask you for a single example of where in the world you had just one at-grade avenue that was about to serve as a foundational backbone for the types of density you want.

The only way the one road example works is with grade separated highways. So I’m scratching my head why the county is intentionally focusing on density along 355 (unless they plan to build a parallel road(s)) and not 270.

The County claims to be tying development to metro stops. So they are chasing along the red line, which runs along 355.

And it is not going to work because people don’t take Metro to shop for groceries, take kids to school or sports practice. Adding more density necessarily adds more road trips and there needs to be road capacity for those trips.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As long as we get interchanges on 355 from the exit at the Beltway up through Urbana.

Again, what will happen to the thousands of businesses and residences that currently line this roadway?

I don't care. I just want a limited access highway from the Beltway up to Urbana.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As long as we get interchanges on 355 from the exit at the Beltway up through Urbana.

Again, what will happen to the thousands of businesses and residences that currently line this roadway?

I don't care. I just want a limited access highway from the Beltway up to Urbana.

Trolls going to troll, I guess.

270 and 355 are critically important pieces of road infrastructure for the county. At minimum it should not be controversial to widen 270 and also maintain the current number of 355 travel lanes. If you actually cared about the residents and businesses, that is.