The Washington Post 132 20100822

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DR. GRIDLOCK Robert Thomson

Readers consider the options of street parking experiment

experiments that offer alternatives to paying with a fistful of quarters.

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Dear Dr. Gridlock: I cannot say that I like any of

the new solutions. I’ve never found it to be a burden to have an old film canister with quarters sitting in the glove compartment. If folks need more than even a half canister, then they are using the space much longer than the time the city has designated. In all the coverage so far, I

ROGER W. SNYDER

More than 80,000 vehicles a day use the part of I-66 that runs through Gainesville. By 2028, transportation officials say, it could be used by more than 175,000 vehicles a day. Route 29 traffic will also soar: from the 57,000 daily vehicles now to a possible 87,000 by 2035.

Smoothing out Gainesville’s snarls

VDOT’s solution to bottlenecks around I-66 enters a new phase: Widening Route 29 and building two overpasses where traffic lights and train tracks add up to frustration.

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hink of the road con- struction across Gainesville as the Springfield Mixing BowlWest. Both sets of

projects have involved complex designs to untangle knots of con- gestion. The Springfield inter- change, completed in 2007, cost $676million. Virginia is invest- ing about $435 million to rebuild roads in the Gainesville area.

BUILDING A BOTTLENECK Gainesville, where Route 29

and Interstate 66 meet on the western side of the D.C. region, has both benefited and suffered from decades of growth. The highways led to new communi- ties where people found the sub- urban environment they were seeking, in an area beyond the reach of most transit. So traffic surged on the two main roads, and their inter- change became a bottleneck. Just south of that, the traffic lights and grade-level Norfolk Southern tracks contribute to notorious traffic jams. A dozen freights a day roll across Route 29. And the amphitheater at Nis-

san Pavilion, now called Jiffy Lube Live, opened just to the east in 1995, adding even more traffic. Traffic counts by the Virginia

Department of Transportation show that I-66 carries more than 80,000 vehicles a day through the area. Transportation officials ex- pect that to grow to more than 175,000 a day by 2028. About 57,000 vehicles use Route 29 through Gainesville. That’s likely to increase to 87,000 by 2035, by VDOT estimates.

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SOURCE: Virginia Department of Transportation MARY KATE CANNISTRA/THE WASHINGTON POST

RELIEF PROGRAM In

recent years, VDOT

launched these projects to ease the congestion:  University Boulevard, a 1.3- mile, four-lane road linking Route 29 and Wellington Road, the site of the amphitheater, opened in 2006. The construction cost about $18million.  Also in 2006, I-66 was widened to eight lanes along the 3.3 miles between Route 234 Business/ Sudley Road and the Route 234 Bypass. The construction cost about $46 million.  This year, the I-66 widening project was extended 2.5 miles west, from the Route 234 Bypass to Route 29. The construction cost about $103 million. Next up is the reconstruction of Route 29 at Linton Hall Road/ Gallerher Road. This is where the troublesome traffic signals and train tracks are. The construc-

tion, one of the biggest transpor- tation projects underway in Vir- ginia, will be about $267 million.

WHAT’S AHEAD

Planners hope the rebuilding will bring relief to thousands of drivers who use this area for shopping, commuting and long- distance travel. The key to the reconstruction will be two new overpasses. One will carry Route 29 over the tracks; the other will carry Linton Hall and Gallerher roads over the tracks and over Route 29. Meanwhile, Route 29 will be widened to six lanes in this area. Driveway entrances and the two traffic lights between I-66 and Virginia Oaks Drive will be elimi- nated. This work is scheduled to be done in December 2014. Transit benefit: The Gaines- ville reconstruction should help clear the way for a westward ex-

tension of Virginia Railway Ex- press commuter trains to Hay- market. The proposed extension would follow the Norfolk South- ern tracks.

CONSTRUCTION IMPACT The construction phase will be

complex: VDOT first had to ac- quire the land around the road junctions, demolish 38 buildings and relocate utilities. That’s been going on for three years. Two detour roads will be built, one on Route 29 and the other on Linton Hall Road. These will take until at least the middle of 2012 to complete. VDOT says the traffic impacts

are likely to be small, because much of the work is away from the existing roads. During the en- tire construction project, the number of lanes available on all the routes will stay the same. — Robert Thomson

DR. G’S TIPS

14TH STREET BRIDGE The work zone on the north- bound 14th Street bridge is about to shift again. On Monday, if the plan goes ac- cording to schedule, commuters will find the left-center lane blocked as they head for either 14th Street or the Southeast- Southwest Freeway. That means the work zone will

have moved one lane to the left. After a year-long phase in which the far-right lane was the only one blocked off, the bridge rehabilita- tion project has moved out fairly rapidly across the span. The cur- rent work zone was set up in July. Although the concrete barriers will be in a different spot this week, the task for drivers remains basically the same. They must

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navigate around this construction island to line up for either 14th Street or the freeway.

Drivers heading for the bridge from northbound Interstate 395 can use the left exit lane (Exit 10C) as a through lane onto the bridge. They will not be required to exit, and they can continue onto the bridge.

When the work zone ends,

there’s about an eighth of a mile left to make lane changes before the highway divides. There is always a lot of traffic movement across the bridge, but pay particular mind to drivers merging from the northbound George Washington Parkway on the right, who are going to have limited space to move left if their destination is 14th Street.

FRANCONIA-SPRINGFIELD GARAGE

The next phase of Metro’s park-

ing garage rehabilitation at Fran- conia-Springfield Station will temporarily take away as many as 220 spaces near the entrance to Level 4 starting Tuesday. During each of the 12 phases of the project, which began last fall and is scheduled to be finished next spring, a segment of the 5,069-space garage at the end of the Blue Line is closed to parking. These are some alternatives that have free parking: Springfield Mall on levels 2, 4 or 6 of the Ma- cy’s garage, the Backlick North Park & Ride at 6831 Backlick Road; or the Gambrill Road Park & Ride, 7321 Gambrill Rd. At each location, there are bus stops near-

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by with routes to the Metro sta- tion.

NEW PATTERN AT INTERSECTION

The District Department of

Transportation has closed the ramp from northbound South Da- kota Avenue to eastbound Riggs Road, marking the latest phase in the reconstruction project near the Fort Totten Metro station. Drivers heading north on South Dakota must now go to the traffic signal at the intersection to make a right turn onto Riggs Road. In an upcoming phase, the

ramp from eastbound Riggs Road to southbound South Dakota Av- enue also will be removed. These permanent ramp closings are part of DDOT’s plan to rebuild the

junction from a hybrid intersec- tion/interchange into a tradition- al four-way intersection. DDOT predicts that the new version will be safer for drivers, walkers and cyclists and provide a more suit- able environment for neighbor- hood development.

COMMUTER BUS PROPOSAL During one of my online chats,

a traveler asked whether the com- pletion of the Intercounty Con- nector would be accompanied by new bus routes. The Maryland Transit Adminis-

tration hopes to add new bus serv- ice when the east-west connec- tor’s first segment, between In- terstate 370 and Georgia Avenue, is completed late this year or early next. Transit administration

POINTS & REWARDS K. Hovnanian Homes

Lord & Taylor

spokesman Terry Owens said that two express bus routes initially would operate along the connec- tor and other roads to link park- and-ride lots in Montgomery County with Baltimore-Washing- ton International Marshall Air- port, MARC’s Penn Line and Fort Meade. The airport service would oper-

ate daily between 4 a.m. and 11 p.m., and trips to Fort Meade would be limited to weekday rush periods. There also are prospects for three other bus routes that would add service between Co- lumbia and Bethesda, Urbana and College Park, and Greenbelt and Germantown.

For more traffic information, go to www.washingtonpost.com/traffic.

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In 2012, the Virginia Department of Transpor- tation will temporarily realign several routes to minimize traffic disrup- tion during construction, scheduled to end in December 2014.

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Route 29 realignment

Gainesville

Gateway Shopping Center

Linton Hall Road realignment

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have heard only that these new systems are being devised for the convenience of the driver, but I don’t see the convenience. The pay-by-space solution, which I consider the least awful of the options offered, involves walking partway up the street and using a credit card, which the system may or may not recognize at first try (this actually happened to me and some others). I do understand that if you punch in your plate number now, you will not have to then walk back to your car, open it and put the receipt in your window. However, I am very uncomfortable with the notion that now, in addition to tracking my movements with the Metro SmarTrip cards, that one could now potentially track my car’s movements through the tags of legally parked vehicles. Even worse is paying by cellphone by pre-registering with a company. If only credit cards may be used, that is more tracking of my movements. And what of people who don’t have a credit card? What of people who don’t have a cellphone — they exist, I understand — or who don’t have one that is charged at the moment? What is the actual rationale for these possible changes other than the “ease to the consumer” argument, which I find spurious? Is it cheaper for the city to operate? Is it expensive to set up but cheaper to operate rather than repairing or replacing meters? Is the collection of cash at meters the problem? — Carol C. Ross, the District

So far, I’m not sure any of the

new parking systems — pay by space, pay by plate, pay by phone — beats dropping quarters in a meter. The quarter drop is still the champ for speed and simplicity. The problem is that you need 16 of them to cover a two-hour stay in most places. The various systems that use a

central pay station have a learning curve that isn’t too steep, and they allow parkers to use cash as well as credit cards. One gripe that I share with some parkers is that it can be difficult to read the parking kiosk screens while entering the required information. The pay-by-plate or

pay-by-numbered-space variations save a step, because the parker doesn’t have to go

any travelers wanted to comment on the D.C. street parking

back to the car to place a receipt on the dashboard. But to many parkers, the directions weren’t clear enough. They still took the receipts back to their cars. The most difficult system to

get used to will be the pay-by-cellphone style. It struck many readers as complicated, compared to the quarter, and it requires the user to set up an account based on a credit card number. John Lisle, a spokesman for the District Department of Transportation, told me that many people are signing up with the two companies, Parkmobile and Verrus Mobile Technologies, that are operating the pay-by-phone programs in the city.

But the question I heard most often was this:

Dear Dr. Gridlock: In the areas contracted to

Parkmobile and Verrus, it appears that the only way to pay is by cellphone. My cellphone is very old, and I can make only phone calls — no texting, no e-mail, no paying bills. Does this mean that I will not be able to pay with coins and therefore, cannot park in those areas? — Adele Leff,

Montgomery County Don’t worry about this. On the

streets where the pay-by-phone pilot programs operate, there are also single-space or multi-space meters. For example, on 23rd Street NW, you can pay by phone or you can put coins in a meter. “We would like to imagine a time when that won’t be necessary — when we can just offer virtual parking meters,” Lisle said in an e-mail. “However, that could disenfranchise some folks like Ms. Leff, and so for now, our strategy is to offer multiple payment options.”

Dr. Gridlock also appears Thursday in Local Living. Comments and questions are welcome and may be used in a column, along with the writer’s name and home community. Personal responses are not always possible.

To contact Dr. Gridlock: By mail: Write to Dr. Gridlock at The Washington Post, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20071. By e-mail: drgridlock@washpost.com. On the Dr. Gridlock blog: blog.washingtonpost. com/dr-gridlock. On Twitter: drgridlock.

on washingtonpost.com

SUNDAY, AUGUST 22, 2010

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