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Just my two cents - our inner and outer suburbs are full of neighborhoods that were designed - particularly at the Montgomery County line - to see little or no traffic in a day. They are divorced from the street grid, and are granted restricted access, or they have winding streets that randomly serve no purpose other than to act as glorified driveways to houses. They may be pretty, but in some cases - it isn't the best use of our resources.

In many cases we deliberately limit traffic out of these residential areas and force volume onto only a few limited arteries. I think there could be some opportunities to improve vehicular transportion if we could use existing roadways that have seemingly been reserved for a precious few - rather than building more expressways.

I remember, for example, when I lived in Loudon county only a few hundred feet from Fairfax County a la Great Falls (before I was able to settle in the District where I could basically ditch my car). There was a road that clearly was designed to cross through a neighborhood and give access to Old Georgetown Road, but the desire to keep certain neighborhoods separate from each other led to a permanent concrete roadblock - meaning I had to travel five miles out of my way to get to the same point on the other side. There are countless neighborhoods that see little to no traffic during the day - yet we pay to maintain these roads that only serve a few and, as a result, act as quasi-private roads. Why can't we use what we have smarter?

by EH on Sep 26, 2011 3:46 pm • link • report