Exactly. There is no sense in building bigger traffic pipes to pump more cars into the center when the core is already thoroughly congested.
Widening 270 north of Gaithersburg will simply encourage developers to add to the sprawl along the corridor. Any new road capacity will be overwhelmed by new traffic volume the moment it opens.
I know I sound like a broken record, but the fact is that we are now a metro area of 10 million people. More cars are a liability inside the beltway, and in an increasing number of places outside the beltway. Too many people have not yet adjusted to this reality. They think pouring more asphalt will solve the problem. It won't.
You have to drive for work, and that's fine. But we have to start getting commuters out of their cars if they're coming into the central city. We need to encourage people to get out of their cars for shorter, non-work trips, which means emphasizing mixed use neighborhoods. And we should be encouraging people to live closer to their jobs -- to trade the 30 mile commute on clogged arterial roads for a two or three mile commute on neighborhood streets.
My standard comment, especially to younger people looking for their first house, is to draw a circle with a radius of five miles around their job, and look really, really hard within that area. My other standard comment is that the best thing we could do in the long run to ease congestion would be to voucher the schools so that toxic public schools would no longer chase so many people to the far suburbs to find a decent school district.
In the short run, the most important simple thing we could do is to create more places to cross 270, the beltway, 66, 395 and a number of non-interstate arterial roads. We have far too many limited access commuter sewers that are barriers to lateral movement. This adds immensely to traffic congestion while degrading the neighborhoods through which they run.
If used with forethought more asphalt could help. But it is no where near the amount needed to widen arterial roads. I am thinking things like adding 80 feet of left turn lanes to all four sides of the intersection of Bradley and Wilson. Getting rid of the left turn from south bound Conn. to Plyers Mill forcing all those people to use an improved Howard to Summit for a jug handle turn might improve both North and South bound traffic in Kensington. Kensington also needs improved pedestrian (and bicycle) crossings of Conn. especially north or south of the business district.
I actually think it would take a few months for the capacity to be filled and overrun, but I agree, it will happen. BTW, if you really want to get people to take the train, try more modest improvements to I-270, such as 8 lanes from Germantown to Frederick for those who actually MUST drive, funded by tolls imposed ALONG THE ENTIRE CORRIDOR FROM THE BELTWAY TO I-70. Spot improvements along the rest of the corridor can be funded that way, also. People will eventually find buses and trains, if they’re efficient enough, more appealing that paying 15 cents or so per mile during rush hour. Of course, federal permission would be required for the tolling regime.
The increased ridership on the transit modes will hopefully translate to lower taxpayer subsidies for them as well.
They are connecting the two stubs of Watkins Mill Road near Montgomery Village across I-270 and adding an exit there, so that’s a start. They will need to go further and make the road more like the Jones Falls Expressway in downtown Baltimore, where you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting an overpass crossing the freeway.