Posted on 04/26/2019 12:58:43 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
MARYLANDERS STUNNED by rush-hour traffic on the Capital Beltway, brace yourselves: Your commute is on track to get much, much worse. Roughly 30,000 more vehicles will be using Maryland’s portion of the highway each day by 2040, on top of the current 253,000, meaning cars and trucks will creep along at an average speed of 14 mph between Bethesda and College Park — a 10-mile segment that will take 43 minutes.
That’s part of the impetus for a bold plan Gov. Larry Hogan (R) has advanced that would add up to four toll lanes to the Beltway and Interstate 270. (Existing lanes would remain free.) The cost, upward of $9 billion, would be borne by a private firm, selected by the state, which would design, build, operate and maintain the toll lanes, in return for a chunk of the revenue. Depending on its design and scope, the project, which would set variable tolls on the new lanes depending on congestion, would keep traffic flowing at 45 mph in the regular lanes and 60 mph in the toll lanes.
Yes, the new lanes would have to be wedged into the Beltway’s narrow corridor in Maryland, meaning existing homes and businesses would be affected. Along the 20-mile span between the George Washington Parkway, on Virginia’s side of the Potomac, and College Park, as many as 34 homes and four businesses could fall victim to the construction, and hundreds more homes could lose all or parts of their backyards, temporarily during construction or permanently to sound barriers.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Maryland “Freak State” PING!
Leftists are bad planners. Move out.
Oh joy!
It’s not about politics.
Government has discovered it can make more money by creating “toll lanes” for private companies.
They play golf together.
WE get screwed...
And we tell our kids our taxes “go to build roads.”
The tree of liberty is wilting, suckers.
“Roughly 30,000 more vehicles will be using Maryland’s portion of the highway each day by 2040”
Heck, since the world will end in 12 years, why worry?
“Does anybody have a dime?”
But in 12 years there won’t be any cars, so why bother?..............
I guess this means the swamp isn’t getting drained by 2040.
‘The cost, upward of $9 billion, would be borne by a private firm, selected by the state’
I’ll save everyone the drama, it’s Cintra [Spanish company], or at least some token US partner, with Cintra.
Isn’t everybody going to be dead by 2032?
Cintra, owned by Ferrovial, gets around.
I’d take a real good look at how and why Cintra got this gig.
I saw a bicycle ride with police escort going over the bridge so I looked it up on the internet. It’s called “Critical Mass”. They ride for two hours 8:00pm on the last Friday night of each month. I am going to join next month. Many wrap their bikes with lights. Traffic was a mess.
I remember hearing that the beltway, was intended to be a bypass route for through traffic going around the Washington DC area. Planners back in the 50s and 60s never thought there would be so much local traffic clogging the beltway.
That can be said about almost any interstate, highway, bridge, or tunnel for that matter.
At least, back then, they tried to accommodate the traffic.
Nowadays, they do the exact opposite and deliberately constrain movement of people, goods, and services.
The dirty little secret is the vulnerability of the greater Washington area to ‘traffic malfunctions’ on the beltway bridges. Several weeks ago an 18 wheeler, carrying 8500 gallons of fuel, jack-knifed on the inner loop of the American Legion Bridge. NB, this closed the beltway inner loop at ONE bridge. The traffic paralysis quickly spread over very large areas of northern Virginia and northwest DC.
Since my 20 minute trip from northern Virginia took 4 hours and change, [via the 14th street bridge] I had time to listen to the drive time traffic chatterbox on a local AM station. Aside from endless chirps that the accident proved ineluctably the need for yet another Potomac crossing, the commentator never speculated at all about the endless consequences of losing one of the beltway bridges for a lengthy period. As would have happened had the 8500 gallons of fuel not been contained. The only valid solution to the absurd vulnerability of the city to total paralysis is to begin to decentralize the government anthill. More pavement never works.
By 2040 the United States as we know it will not exist. There will be no prosperity. Cars will be a luxury beyond the reach of almost all. And starvation will stalk the land. Traffic jams? Naw.
My uncle has a country place
That no one knows about
He says it used to be a farm
Before the Motor Law
And on Sundays I elude the eyes
And hop the Turbine Freight
To far outside the Wire
Where my white-haired uncle waits
Jump to the ground
As the Turbo slows to cross the borderline
Run like the wind
As excitement shivers up and down my spine
Down in his barn
My uncle preserved for me an old machine
For fifty odd years
To keep it as new has been his dearest dream
I strip away the old debris
That hides a shining car
A brilliant red Barchetta
From a better vanished time
I fire up the willing engine
Responding with a roar
Tires spitting gravel
I commit my weekly crime
Wind
In my hair
Shifting and drifting
Mechanical music
Adrenaline surge...
Well-weathered leather
Hot metal…
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