I don't understand how road diets cause accidents. I can see how they would cause slow downs and make people late, but sitting in traffic doesn't cause accidents.

If the reason for the back up was accidents, that's the fault of unsafe driving, not road diets. The fact that there were multiple accidents yesterday afternoon actually cuts against the idea that road diets are to blame, and could be seen as evidence that *more* road diets are necessary, to dissuade the unsafe drivers who cause accidents via speeding and refusing to obey traffic laws from driving at all.

So which is it? Was the congestion caused by unsafe drivers getting into accidents, or was it the intention creation of road diets?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Accidents on multiple North-South routes. This is happening because capacity has been reduced on all of those and DOT is intentionally increasing congestion throughout the city as a safety measures.

This is a factor. Also factors: Ramped-up return-to-office policies in the public and private sectors that have seen far more office worker types commuting downtown than they had been for the last five years; more aggressive driving since the pandemic (this is obviously anecdotal, but I've seen it everywhere, cities, suburbs, various states); bad luck.

A return to the office was inevitable and very predictable. Nothing that happened from 2020-2022 was normal. Using that as a baseline comparison is extremely disengenuous.

The simple truth is that, in 2022, DDOT started reducing capacity on all the major routes in and out of town and changed the timing on stop lights in order to increase congestion.

This created a scenario whereby there is no excess capacity on any of the major roads. Thus, there are no detours around a problem. If two of those routes get hit by an incident, such as an accident or temporary road closure, the entire network becomes gridlocked.

All of this was warned about repeatedly and ignored. The whole road diet/traffic calming project is reminiscent of what the George W. Bush administration did in Iraq.

Anonymous wrote:Accidents on multiple North-South routes. This is happening because capacity has been reduced on all of those and DOT is intentionally increasing congestion throughout the city as a safety measures.

This is a factor. Also factors: Ramped-up return-to-office policies in the public and private sectors that have seen far more office worker types commuting downtown than they had been for the last five years; more aggressive driving since the pandemic (this is obviously anecdotal, but I've seen it everywhere, cities, suburbs, various states); bad luck.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why is this political in nature?

Because the cause of the problem is a series of political choices that deliberately and knowingly increased congestion.

That being pro or anti-congestion is now a political issue is indeed stupid. But this is the world we now live in.

Yes! It is a terrible that we are forced to deal with this WFO political movement. It’s funny the biggest advocate for this are people who no longer work or are like Trump who never are in the office working. It is disgusting.

They are disgusting. But what's truly disgusting are those that pushed to change everything about our transportation network during the pandemic in a delusional effort to prevent a return to normalcy.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why is this political in nature?

Because the cause of the problem is a series of political choices that deliberately and knowingly increased congestion.

That being pro or anti-congestion is now a political issue is indeed stupid. But this is the world we now live in.

Yes! It is a terrible that we are forced to deal with this WFO political movement. It’s funny the biggest advocate for this are people who no longer work or are like Trump who never are in the office working. It is disgusting.

Anonymous wrote:People are terrible drivers here, period.

When every light turns green, about half as many cars get through as should be the case because most people are looking down at their cell phones. I guess people just really need to watch dumb tiktok videos in the 1 minute that they're waiting for the light to change. I really wish there was some effort to ticket people for this.

It’s called a road (or traffic) diet. Theory is by reducing actual lanes or purposefully reconfiguring traffic to deliberately increase congestion, drivers will eventually become so frustrated they will start taking alternative routes, ride their bike or take public transit.

It’s a real thing and it’s very political. Alexandria has been championing this cause for over a decade. It hasn’t worked but they will never, ever admit it nor take any corrective measures. Ever.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why is this political in nature?

Because the cause of the problem is a series of political choices that deliberately and knowingly increased congestion.

That being pro or anti-congestion is now a political issue is indeed stupid. But this is the world we now live in.

+1. The city of Alexandria is currently trying to REMOVE lanes on perpetually clogged Duke street because they think adding a bus lane and a bike lane will make the city a better place. It's absolutely asinine.

The city of alexandria removed a slip lane from King st to S. Walter Reed YEARS AGO FOR NO REASON and now the traffic backs up on king st for miles. Nothing is done about it lane is still closed for no reason. They simply do not care if your sitting in traffic for no reason or not. The traffic would 100000% not back up on King st every day many times a day if that right slip turn lane road was open.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why is this political in nature?

Because the cause of the problem is a series of political choices that deliberately and knowingly increased congestion.

That being pro or anti-congestion is now a political issue is indeed stupid. But this is the world we now live in.

+1. The city of Alexandria is currently trying to REMOVE lanes on perpetually clogged Duke street because they think adding a bus lane and a bike lane will make the city a better place. It's absolutely asinine.

Anonymous wrote:Why is this political in nature?

Because the cause of the problem is a series of political choices that deliberately and knowingly increased congestion.

That being pro or anti-congestion is now a political issue is indeed stupid. But this is the world we now live in.

People are terrible drivers here, period.

Why is this political in nature?

There was also something majorly wrong with the outer loop in Bethesda today - it was closed for hours

Accidents on multiple North-South routes. This is happening because capacity has been reduced on all of those and DOT is intentionally increasing congestion throughout the city as a safety measures.

But seriously, tonight seems like the worst traffic I have encountered in years. What is going on??