Hogan announces start of $105 million I-81 widening

The Hagerstown Herald-Mail ^ | December 24, 2016 | CJ Lovelace

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan came to Hagerstown Thursday bearing gifts, announcing the start of a $105 million project to widen Interstate 81.

In partnership with West Virginia, the first phase of construction of the long-sought project, which recently got under way, will expand the heavily traveled interstate to six lanes from U.S. 11 in West Virginia to Md. 63 near Williamsport.

"These improvements to I-81 are critical infrastructure investments that will help citizens here in Washington County, across Western Maryland and all across our state go about their daily lives in a faster, more efficient and safer manner," Hogan said at a news conference before a large crowd in front of the The Maryland Theatre downtown.

The 5-mile stretch of work includes reconstruction of the Potomac River bridges and two bridges at the Md. 63 interchange, according to Hogan and a Maryland Department of Transportation news release.

Hogan was joined by Deputy Secretary of Transportation Jim Ports, who called Hogan "Maryland's Santa Claus," at the announcement attended by numerous state, local and business officials.

"It started off as a slogan, it became a promise and now it's a reality," Ports said. "Working in transportation for the Hogan administration is like Christmas morning every day ... because just like Santa Claus, we continue to deliver projects for Western Maryland."

Hogan said that another $5 million in state funds have been budgeted for design work of the second phase of widening, allowing the project to progress north to the Interstate 70 interchange.

He also announced that he has submitted an application for a federal FASTLANE grant to help pay for construction of the second and future phases, eventually widening the entire 12-mile portion of I-81 up to the Pennsylvania line to six lanes.

"This is a very important project, and it needs to happen," state Del. Neil C. Parrott said.

Parrott, R-Washington, and Hogan both stressed the importance of the Maryland General Assembly repealing the so-called "road kill" bill, which they claim could threaten nearly every transportation project in Maryland.

"If this bill is not defeated, we will not be able to compete" with proposed projects in metropolitan areas of the state, Parrott said, noting that the legislation ignores rural areas of Maryland and favors mass transit over road projects.

"We will not stop fighting until this catastrophic bill is repealed," said Hogan, who vetoed the bill this past spring before the legislature overrode it.

Expected to be completed by summer 2020, the first phase of I-81 work — paid for by $65 million from Maryland and $40 million from West Virginia — will include new stormwater-management systems, upgraded lighting, as well as new signs and guardrails to enhance safety along the corridor, according to state officials.

During the construction, work beneath the Potomac River bridges won't impact traffic as crews build new bridge piers to hold the two additional lanes of travel. Two travel lanes will be maintained throughout the project.

[RegulatorCountry]

If the trains themselves were the special things they once were, aesthetically in and out as well as creature comforts, and they were also convenient for not just city people but suburban people, then maybe passenger trains might return to prominence. As it stands, though, it’s an effort for even day trips or vacationing, since access isn’t all that great. Need to rethink basic assumptions. I’d love to take the train on occasion, if it was pleasurable and rewarding. Can’t say that it is for the majority of the country right now.

[Raymann]

Have you seen a Maryland MARC train? 800 people on each train coming into union station in DC every 20 minutes. It’s by far the best way to commute into DC. SAME goes for the VRE in Virginia and Amtrak for intercity.

[palmer]

More people too, though I know the automobile supremacists won't see it that way.

The I-81 corridor is spread out. Rail does work for some cargo, but it won't work for moving people, especially not $500 round trip with 2-3 bus changes.

[BlueLancer]

"Hogan announces start of $105 million I-81 widening"

And that's just the part that runs from Stalag 13 to Berlin ...

[Dr. Sivana]

The nasty part of I-81 is in PA. The WV/MD parts are driveable.

[DoughtyOne]

These are reasoned alternative views.  Let me respond on point.

actually, in the state you mention, 3 lanes going 25, one lane let’s say completely empty, opening up that lane to all traffic would make only a minor change in total flow.

As much as anything, it's an insult to everyone whose tax dollars went to pay for the freeway, to tell them NO YOU CAN'T USE THIS LANE BECAUSE I SAID SO.  That is totally unacceptable on the face of it.  If there needs to be more lanes, then build them and hurry up about it.

Along these lines, we have the power companies, the water companies, the gas companies, and the state telling us they can't provide the services we need.  If our grandparents generation had said this, we'd be in even bigger trouble.  We will continue to have to plan and build adequate resources for the present and for the future.  This generation of leaders have their heads so firmly implanted, you wonder how they dress themselves in the morning.  If you don't think it's your duty to provide the services needed, why are you in a leadership position where the requirements are just that?  People are relying on you.  Do your fricken job!  (not you personally)

Let's move on to the idea that increasing the traffic flow by 33% wouldn't improve things much.  I used to drive on a freeway 25 miles each way to work.  At 25 miles per hour that drive took 60 minutes.  At 33 mph it would have taken 45 minutes.  That's a full half hour less driving per day.  With tens of thousands of other motorists on the same road, think of the tens of thousands of hours of productivity would be returned to the public each day.  Is that significant?  Think about the more than 25% savings in gasoline for every vehicle out there.  One, you travel faster and get better mileage.  Two, you get there faster and don't have to burn gas for a full hour anymore.

So yes, this would be significant.  What would be the fastest way to drive up gasoline wastage?  I submit it would be to jam pack as many cars into three lanes with one underutilized.  This hasn't cut down on gas usage.  It has caused it to grow exponentially.

And that is even if we assume that a “2-person” rule has been useless in encouraging anybody to double-up.

Take a good look at the people who ride in the car-pool lane.  The vast majority are families or friends.  They may not even be headed to work.  I know that when I travel with retired friends, we carpool to save money and wear and tear our cars.  It just makes sense.  We're headed to the same place ten to one hundred miles away.  Did car pooling cause us to do this?  The idea the car-pool lanes are some big boon to energy consumption is just plain idiotic.  I've already pointed out how the cars jammed into fewer lanes burn massive extra amounts of gasoline needlessly.  The idiots who come up with great sounding ideas, NEVER admit to themselves that they are doing nothing more than driving up gallons burned by the millions of gallons, while reducing gallons of gasoline burned by the tens of thousands of gallons.

IF you assumed that the 2-person rule was useful, and that eliminating it would make the 2-person cars into 1-person cars, then “opening up” the lane,even if it has only 10% of the traffic of the other lanes, doubles the traffic in that lane before you add anybody from the other lanes.

This would make sense, if it wasn't based on pure fantasy.  One, very few people car-pool based on the idea they are doing it for the environment.  They do it because it happens to work well for them.  Someone who works at the same company lives nearby.  They join up to do this out of personal interest.  If they are doing it to save the environment, I'd advise them not to do it.  I've already touched on the idea these car-pool lanes cause massive amounts of extra fuel to be burned off daily.

The question is why more people don’t double-up to avoid that 25-mph road situation...

No, that's the Leftist lunatics pipe dream argument.  It's pure falicy.

The question is, why don't more Leftists understand that people don't live and work right next door to each other?  DUH!  Is that really so hard to grasp?

People here in Southern California drive anywhere from 1 to 100 miles each way daily.  They do so because jobs have opened up far away, and the need for employment requires them to go where the jobs are.  What a novel idea...

My old job used to cause me to make side street connections to a freeway, drive 25 miles on that freeway, drive another ten miles on side streets making turn after turn to get there.  Unless I wanted to add 20 minutes to my drive each morning or evening in rush hour traffic, I would drive alone.

Here’s an interesting thing. If you presume people will follow the 1-car-length per 10 mph rule, and you compare a “fully packed” lane going 25 mph with a “fully-packed” lane going 60 mph, on the 25 mph lane you get 25 cars per minute past a point, while in the 60-mph lane you get 30 cars per minute.

Good grief the power of imagination...  That one car-length per 10 mph rule is a fantasy.

Where do you live, in the farmlands of Iowa?  When I drove to work we were traveling anywhere from 10 to 70 mph, and we were not by any stretch of the imagination driving one to seven car lengths behind each other.  We were driving at most about 20-35 feet behind each other at speed.

In other words, even if people give the correct following distance, if you have a lane moving 25 mph, and you can FORCE that lane to go 60 mph, you’ll actually “thin out” the number of cars in a lane by 5 cars per minute by pushing them faster.

This was so outlandish I won't respond on point.  Thanks for the mention.

Meaning that the only reason they go slower is because the lane is overwhelmed. On the other hand, it shows that if you push more than 5 cars more into that lane, than the 25 on the other lanes, it will slow down to 25 mph.

You're living in a fantasy land.  People car-pool for self interest.  They will do so because it is convenient.  Period.  You won't see major movement to or from single cars if you eliminate the car-pool lanes.

There’s also a theory of road management built around this, that if you can slow traffic down just a little bit, you can get more cars through per minute, and avoid the overfull state that causes traffic to grind to a halt. This theory is being successfully used with some roads where they put speed limits every tenth of a mile for each lane, and if everybody obeys them, traffic moves quickly and smoothly.

That theory is asinine.

Having driven in freeway traffic for 45 years, I can tell you this theory is idiotic to the max.

In real world circumstances cars travel very fast at distances much less than 1 car length for every ten miles per hour.  I have driven all the way from Los Angeles to San Diego four lanes at 65 mph plus with very little room between cars.  If these brilliant thinkers think they can move more cars traveling at slower speeds, their grasp of reality is non-existant.  And frankly, the whole idea of car-pool lanes is based on just such illogic.

[CharlesWayneCT]

You certainly realize that actual traffic management is based on these silly artificial constructs like “following distance”.

Of course, nobody adheres to following distance, that’s why cars run into the back of each other all the time on highways, which is why we have random 15-mile backups.

Well that, and the odd but predictable foibles of the typical driver, like you’ll get a 1-mile backup on your side of the highway if there is a visible accident on the other side. And that traffic will slow down an average of 10 mph if you put barriers up on the left shoulder — because people get scared.

The point is that driving faster in the real world does not always lead to getting more cars through each our.

And yes, there is clearly a flaw in HOV which is that it just doesn’t always influence people. But IF it could, adding an HOV lane would be like adding 2 regular lanes, as forcing people to double-up eliminates one lane of cars. (and yes, practically now those people were driving 2 to a car anyway, it’s families, etc).

Virginia did a hilarious thing, letting hybrid cars get special plates and drive solo in the lanes. Proving that it wasn’t about moving more people, it was about some bizarre notion of “saving energy”. Eventually they grandfathered the program because too many people took advantage of it, buying hybrids and paying the extra fee simply to get to use those fast lanes.

We now have HOT lanes, where you can pay extra money to a private company that maintains special lanes. I hated that they took HOV lanes for it, because we paid for them. On the other hand, you can pay $10 and get somewhere quicker.

Not enough people want to pay the extra taxes needed to build roads. Well, especially since our elected officials want to steal that money and use it for useless public transportation modes.

[DoughtyOne]

Thanks for the response Charles.

You couldn’t have done a better job of defending the defenseless.

[CharlesWayneCT]

It’s a hard job, but someone has to tackle futility..... :)

[DoughtyOne]

Virginia did a hilarious thing, letting hybrid cars get special plates and drive solo in the lanes. Proving that it wasn’t about moving more people, it was about some bizarre notion of “saving energy”. Eventually they grandfathered the program because too many people took advantage of it, buying hybrids and paying the extra fee simply to get to use those fast lanes.

What I think was even more transparent, was that if you wanted to pay a fee, it was okay to drive in the HOV lane.

This whole thing is a great big sham.

You also touched on nobody wanting to pay more.

We have 2.5 to 3 times more cars that we had in the 1980s, and they are mostly running on gas still.

They are raking in hundreds of millions continually, and can't finance roads. You explained why too. They spend it on pet projects. None of those projects will pay for themselves.

[DoughtyOne]

LOL

You know, surprisingly there are very few accidents due to the packed cars. When we were taught to drive they told us one car length for every ten miles per hour, OR ELSE.

The or else is very few accidents in reality.

If you consider the numbers of cars and the numbers of accidents, we’re talking a very small number of accidents percentage wise.

What they never figured out, is that the car in front of you can’t stop on a dime. When it starts to slow down, you start to slow down too. Generally the guy behind can react in time to avoid impact. If you’re watching traffic ahead, which you have to do in heavy freeway traffic, you see the slowing ahead and account for it.

One of my pet peeves is the guy that breaks hard with a big gap in front of him. You’re watching traffic ahead, and this person is standing on the brake like he’s inches for an impact. It’s hard to avoid folks like that.

[CharlesWayneCT]

There are many things I dislike... People driving in the left lane at the speed limit or lower when there is room to the right. People who don’t drive all the way to the merge point before merging, and worse people who get MAD at people for driving all the way to a merge point before merging. People who brake when they have plenty of space in front of them. Large vehicles I can’t see through to view the traffic in front of them (OK, for this I simply move over until there’s a smaller car I can follow).

I watched an accident a week ago caused because a car in the left lane decided to merge into a tiny space on the right, while moving 20 mph slower. It was just like the car could “stop on a dime”, and caused the requisite damage, not to the car it cut off who managed to stop, but the idiot who was ALSO in the left lane, driving 20 miles per hour FASTER than the really slow car, who ALSO decided to dive into the next lane, right BEHIND the car.

But yes, while we have a lot of accidents in our area, it is few relative to the number of cars. And watching how many idiots are driving, and how badly they do so, I’m constantly amazed the entire highway system isn’t one big pile of broken cars.

[9YearLurker]

I should have realized that federal “grants” were behind those wasteful lanes!

[Rebelbase]

I-81 is by far the prettiest driving interstate on the east coast. Well, I can’t speak for whats in NH/VT/ME there may be some nice country there as well, but at least in the south it’s I-81 for scenery.

[NorthMountain]

I-81 runs through the narrow panhandle of both MD and WV.

About 25 miles in WV, about 13 miles in MD. VA really needs the upgrade. Half of I81 in WV is now 3 lanes each way.

[NorthMountain]

It’s by far the best way to commute into DC IF and ONLY if you're planning to spend all day in DC on a normal work day. But for that segment (which is huge), MARC is great.

[NorthMountain]

The prisoners in Stalag 13 had more freedom than the residents of the Peoples’ Republic of Maryland ...

[RegulatorCountry]

I-40 from Asheville to Newport, TN is stunning but it’s tough to appreciate the view, full attention needs to be paid to the road. “Watch for falling rocks” adds to the experience, too, lol.

There’s something about the Shenandoah Valley, though. Feels like home although I’ve never lived there personally. Genetic memory? Some ancestors were there prior to the 1760’s.

[RegulatorCountry]

Not that big of an ordeal for WV, a major one for VA, which has I believe 325 miles worth of I-81.

[Rebelbase]

I was lucky to have spent a summer going to school at JMU in Harrisonburg. Aside from the town smelling like a bag of dog food (Purina plant) the area has a pastoral beauty that is unequaled.