Hogan announces $50 million signal upgrade on Maryland highways to improve traffic flow

The Baltimore Sun ^ | October 25, 2017 | Michael Dresser

[babble-on]

Vote “sphinx” for Mayor of Nashville.

Seriously that is exactly what we are dealing with. Surrounding counties are experience huge residential growth, but the jobs are still in Nashville proper. The interstates are totally choked so the traffic is naturally migrating to surface streets and making those impassable as well. Drivers see the existence of traffic jams as a violation of the Natural Law and Basic Human Rights, and demand solutions from the city of Nashville, even though they moved out of it specifically to avoid paying the taxes that would fund those solutions.

[sphinx]

If you are not careful, the next stage will be to take some of these now-choked neighborhood streets and "improve" them by turning them into high speed commuter sewers. The first thing to go is on-street parking, which destroys the local businesses. Then you lose sidewalks and tree plats. The street becomes blighted, and this easily spreads into the surrounding area. I can point to many areas around DC and the older suburbs where this happened. People now realize that was a mistake (did they do anything right in the 60's and 70's?) and are trying to restore livable neighborhoods, but the smarter choice is to not destroy them in the first place.

The commuters need to live closer to work. Or ride a bus. Or carpool. Or accept the long commute as the price of their choice. When they get tired of that, they can move back in and help gentrify the salvageable closer-in areas.

[GreyFriar]

I’m cutting my travel time by departing Maryland for the Mid-west.