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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

[b]Maryland HAS done it your way for the last 30 years, at least.[/b]  Despite huge population growth, the attitude has been, let's make it so miserable to drive that people will be forced on to Metro.  Contrast that to VA, and amazingly, as soon as I cross the bridge, the traffic gets better.  Are there still some jams in VA, sure, but most of them I can pay to get around if I really need to.  Love the ICC, which has made so many trips so much faster.  I wholeheartedly support widening 270 and I live just a few blocks from it.[/quote]

I guess you forgot the last time 270 got widened, which was less than 30 years ago. Within less than 10 years, it was just as backed-up as before, only it was much wider, there were more cars on it, air and water pollution were worse, noise pollution was worse, and Maryland had thrown a huge amount of money down a hole.

Bigger highways just get you more traffic.

Put the money into transit so that people have real choices for getting around.

[/quote]

You have to explain why.  You can't just say, "bigger higheways just get more traffic".  The reason why is because when the highway is made wider, it makes traffic better - the intended goal of the widdening.  People look at commutes from further out thinking that the drive isn't that bad and far more people move further away from their office.  Once enough people have done this to get cheaper housing with an easy commute, the roads are horrible and everyone hates their commute.  People should be encouraged to live as close in as they can afford.  We need building at Metro stations.[/quote]

No, when you make the highways wider, you are incentivizing more tract housing and strip malls further out, so more people move there with cars as the only mobility option. It has been this way since the 1940's.[/quote]

Lurker here.  The reason why the traffic got worse after the last widening is because the DC metro region is still one of the metropolitan areas that has grown a lot and continues to grow.  Since 1980, the population has more than doubled (it achieved double in 2016).  In 1980 the regional population was 3.06M.   In 1990 (that 30 year ago mark) it was 3.9M.  As of 2016, it was 6.13M and it is currently 6.22M.  In those 30 years, the housing has not doubled and that has forced the real estate prices up and forced the demand to spread further and further out to accommodate the continued migration of people into the region.  In that time the annual growth rate has averaged 1.78%.  The current growth rate if between 0.7% and 1% annually.  Our population is expected to be up more than 2M by 2030.  That means that the population will be up 33% to near 8.5M by 2030.  The close in areas are already close to saturation.  You may be lucky that with conversion to multi-family housing and some urban growth, to get maybe 6-10% more residences in the close in areas, but nowhere near the 30+% that is expected.  There just aren't enough residences in the close in areas to handle that volume of increase, so people are going to be forced to move further out.  Additionally that means that the demand closer in will be high and the real estate prices will continue to rise.  The bulk of the middle class will be forced further and further out and be forced to commute.  Even with increased public transportation spending, the system will not be able to handle that increase alone.  So  we are going to need a combination of both bigger roads and bigger mass transit systems.  There is no way this region can continue along the predicted growth rate without both.[/quote]

Yes it can. By having more density around metro stations and expanding BRT options. We don't need to keep building single-family tract housing on farms. that is the most wasteful use of land in human history.[/quote]

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