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Maryland “Freak State” PING!

if some liberal douchbag politician was planning this highway build this “journalist” would be slobbering all over his shoes on the great “infrastructure build” and “investment”.

I wonder what this idiot thinks of J Brown’s trains to nowhere ?

Don’t change the bw Parkway.

I’d like to see anyone come up with a real solution, sans killing off more population or keeping “foreigners” out.

I’d like mass transit in general - mostly rail; but I hate the idea of all of it being funded by gov. Then again, maybe the roads likewise shouldn’t be all gov, either.

solve all the state’s transportation gridlock and congestion by paving the countryside with lanes of new concrete.

They say that like it's a bad thing.

So apparently 30 miles of bumper to bumper gridlock is a pastoral scene of total serenity to this guy.

The BW parkway is already a tension filled ride just wondering if the backup starts just over the next hill.

2/3 of the way through an article full of phoney baloney we get to the critic's real beef:

Say goodbye to any future mass transit projects.

There is so much wrong with this article, I hardly know where to start.

1. Then Hogan says he’ll take the state’s part of the profits and turn the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, now owned by the U.S. Park Service, into curb-to-curb concrete with nary a tree or woodlands in between…How can the Park Service, even under a run-amuck Trump administration, turn the parkway’s 30 miles of mature woodlands over to a state eager to destroy those trees and vast stretches of scenic greenery? Is such a move even legally permissible?

Inside the beltway, the BW parkway is a fraud as far as being a "park" -- there is a very narrow band of trees that have apartment buildings backed up on them. Outside the beltway, there is little more -- the NASA Greenbelt facility is parkland now? the experimental farms? There may be a total of 5 miles of the entire road that is truly going through parkland. MAY be.

2. Hogan’s plan gives zero attention to a balanced transit solution in Central Maryland, instead putting all the state’s transportation eggs in a highway basket. That’s not the direction Virginia or other Eastern states with similar congestion woes are heading.

Hello. The PURPLE LINE anybody? I'm sure this idiot objects to the environmental damage caused by the PURPLE LINE (for those who don't live here, the Purple Line is a light rail project that will connect the New Carrolton metro station on the east side of the DC metro and the Bethesda station -- on the Western part -- as far as Maryland goes).

3. Such a vast expansion of I-295, I-495 and I-270 will create massive new gridlock at exit and access points.

How in the world could Russell Street in Baltimore handle an additional two lanes of rush-hour traffic? Ditto as the BW Parkway flows into New York Avenue in D.C. It would be a nightmare. Arterial roads and cut-through streets in adjacent neighborhoods along these three interstate highways would be clogged. The law of unintended consequences could kick in.

Again, so much wrong here: Before Russell Street, MD 295 (a/k/a the extended part of the BW Parkway) has an interchange with I-95 (dumbass). On the other end, the Parkway doesn't dump into NY Avenue, dumbass. It divides: part goes to Kennilworth Avenue (a/k/a DC 201) and the other part connects to US 50.

270 into 495? Sure...but the way to fix that is to remove the choke points at the Legion Bridge...which desperately needs to be fixed...and the sharp curves around the Mormon Temple. Pretty easy to fix the latter part, but there are too many rich liberals living in Bethesda and Kensington who would keep that tied up in court for years.

4. What happened to helping Joe Six-Pack and the “forgotten Americans” who can’t afford E-ZPass transponders and frequent Lexus lanes?

Seriously? In case the dumbass author doesn't understand the concept, let me color him a picture: every car that takes the "Lexus Lanes" is one less car on the main road.

Does this author even live in Maryland?

The best way to fix the problem around DC is to shrink the size of the federal government around here. (Just let me sell my property first LOL) -- that will reduce the number of cars on the road better than anything else.

But since that's not likely to happen anytime soon, there are a few things that could work for DC traffic (in addition to what the Governor is proposing):

Make an "outer beltway" -- even as a toll road -- that runs along the path of the ICC on the north, connects with 301 and turns that into a freeway, and run down to Indian Head / Ft Belvoir on the east, uses the path of the Fairfax County Parkway (change to a freeway) on the south and west, and connects up to the ICC in Gaithersburg, would solve a huge amount of traffic problems. Since most of the land is already road, the amount of property that would have to be purchased under eminent domain would be really, really minimal. Yes, there would be need for two new bridges, but anybody living here has got to acknowledge the need anyway.
Make a decent way to get into the District from the west. The "Clara Barton Parkway" / Canal Road just doesn't cut it. There needs to be an actual freeway for those folks...one that connects directly to Whitehurst without having to go through lights on M Street.

I don't know Baltimore as well as DC, but the big question I have is why the little "395" spur that connects to Platt Street by Camden Yards just stops? And why does 83, which connects to the other side of Downtown just stop? Logic says, connect the two together. Maybe turn MLK Blvd into a limited access freeway. The other big question is why does 70 just stop at the Beltway? Did nobody think that it might be smart to connect it up directly with 95? Wouldn't it make sense to connect the main east-west freeway in the country with the Port of Baltimore?

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