Commuter News

[bjarvis]

Our home is near a major on/off ramp of the Capitol Beltway (aka Eight Lanes of Hell). The Maryland Dept of Transportation has been working on redoing all of the ramps to & from Georgia Avenue from the beltway for a few years and they have considerable more work still to go.

One of the projects is to take out the cloverleaf ramps and replace them with traffic-light controlled extended ramps. In theory, this would allow easier merges and fairer access, especially for the inner loop traffic heading southbound on Georgia Avenue towards DC during the morning rush hour.

Tuesday, they activated the new traffic lights. As of 30 minutes ago, the usual 0.25 mile line of traffic waiting to merge southbound from the inner loop is now a five mile backup. Good work, guys. Thank god my commute isn't affected.

This morning's commute to work was actually very nice, thanks to some unexpected scenery. In the lane adjacent to me for most of the 30+ mile drive was a hot guy riding a Yamaha motorcycle northbound on I270. Wisps of dark hair around the edges of his helmet with a huge, thick white-as-snow mustache. Dark furry forearms. Tight-fitting white t-shirt, blue jeans. Mmmmmm...

If the traffic wasn't so heavy, I would have tried grabbing a photo with my cell phone. drool

Comments

[manley1.livejournal.com]

Ugh, the Beltway is a horrid monstrosity. I really hate the merge from 66E onto 495N since it's a left merge. It seems to be rife with issues.

You should see some of the traffic patterns around the Boston area. They are, well, creative? The 93/95 interchange north of Boston is a cloverleaf with a series of sharp turns to make it extra perilous to merge into traffic without slamming into another car. Wheee...

I'm so, so, so glad not to have to drive to work.

[ciddyguy.livejournal.com]

Those metered ramps can be quite good if done well and we have them all over Seattle but I venture about a 1/4 of them are not used much of the time, including during the worst of the traffic.

In the 4 months since I began working out at T-Mobile, only once have the metered lights on the on ramp to I-90 west bound were ever used and we've had backups well past the entrance and cars piling up trying to get onto the barely moving freeway, lest we end up on Bellevue Way.

Guys with the right furriness and looks can be quite drool worthy indeed and it's amazing what I find drool worthy these days. ;-)

[paigemom.livejournal.com]

Holy crap! They were working on those ramps when *I* lived there!

[moofedct.livejournal.com]

They work pretty well here. Will yours include HOV entrance lanes?

I was filling the bike today and a very hot daddy bear was filling his 300 ZX, kept eyeballing me. With my helmet on, he couldn't see me smiling at him. :/