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Potholes Driving You Crazy?
This year, we have been barraged with potholes due to all the extreme winter weather. These potholes not only drive us crazy because they keep our wheel alignments hopelessly out of whack, but there are so many of them that they are almost impossible to avoid!
Some unfortunate souls have even experienced tire blowouts or worse because of these nuisances. You may be able to get the city/county to pay for the damage if you make a claim.
It could take a while to fix them all, so we’ll have to exercise some patience (and maybe just put an extra wheel alignment in the budget for the next couple of months). Feel free to vent about your personal experiences or ones you’ve witnessed in the comments section.
To aid the entire effort, please see some online resources you can use to report those nasty, pesky, awful potholes. When filing your report, please provide the precise location, a picture (if possible), and the severity of the potholes.
Vaya con Dios!
D.C. (DDOT)
Dial 202-727-1000 or311 (if dialing from within the city), fill out an online request, or tweet @DDOTDC.
Maryland (State Highway Administration)
If the road is a numbered route such as Rte. 355, 117, please contact Maryland State Highway at 301-513-7300. You can also fill out an online request.
Montgomery County
See Maryland State Highway Administration above. You can also call the County at 240-777-0311 or 311 if you are calling from within the county. Or fill out an online request.
Prince George’s County
See Maryland State Highway Administration above. To report a pothole on a County maintained road, please call 301-499-8520 or fill out an online request.
Baltimore City (BCDOT)
Use Facebook, Twitter, call 311, or fill out a request form.
Baltimore County
Call 410-887-3560, e-mail highways@baltimorecountymd.gov, or fill out a request form.
Howard County
Contact the Highways Operations Division at 410-313-2900, by email highways@howardcountymd.gov, or fill out an online request.
Anne Arundel County
Call the Pothole Hotline: (410) 222-7045 or your appropriate road district. Road districts are open from 7:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., Monday through Friday. You may also report a pothole by email: potholes@aacounty.org
Virginia (VDOT)
To report any road maintenance issues, you can call 1-800-FOR-ROAD (1-800-367-7623), call 703-383-8368, or fill out an online request.
Arlington County
Call 703-228-6570 or fill out an online request. You can also report a problem on Facebook or Twitter.
Fairfax County
If there’s a pothole on a road you know is maintained by the county, then contact 703-877-2800 or see VDOT above.
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What Would It Take To Improve Your Commute?
In October, Washingtonpost.com’s Dr. Gridlock blog asked a very poignant question that I’ve been itching to answer for awhile now: Money or power what would it take to improve your commute?
Basically, the question is if there were no limits to how much money or power it would take to implement your ideas, what would you do? I tried to reply on the comment board, but due to technical difficulties, couldn’t post there. So, I decided to post my response here. There are several ideas I would implement simultaneously because there is no “one size fits all” solution to this problem — it’s SO BIG!
– Agree with Teacher26 on this: more strict driver education classes to teach new drivers etiquette as well as school them on the unwritten “rules of the road” (Slower Traffic KEEP RIGHT, Pass on the Left, Proper Merging Techniques, Turn Signals: They’re Not Just for Show, The Perils of Distracted Driving, How Not to Play the Part of the Idiot Driver, etc).
– Execute a robust PSA campaign to educate already-licensed drivers who continue to practice bad driving habits and not obey the above unwritten “rules of the road”.
– Extend all metro lines out to what is now considered the greater D.C. metro area and plan/build an additional system of metrorail lines that would allow for suburb-to-suburb commuting to/from dense urban greater D.C. metro areas.
– Two-tier the entire length of the Baltimore-Washington Parkway/295 between cities and make both tiers three lanes each way.
– Offer major mass transit routes to adequately connect the greater Washington D.C. and greater Baltimore metro areas together because they have both collided years ago.
– Eliminate all HOV lanes wherever they exist as they are a waste of space.
– Implement congestion pricing to control use of high-use roads/highways.
– Expand high-speed rail so that we can commute to other cities up/down East Coast in two hours or less.
– Build a tunnel from VA to MD along American Legion Bridge and add two-tier capacity to the bridge.
– Build another tunnel connecting DC/MD for Metro’s blue line.
– Build a 95 highway bypass so out-of-area traffic can stay off local highways.
– Incentivize more Fortune 500, 100, 50 employers to any part of P.G. County so that P.G.’s large white collar population no longer HAS to commute to Montgomery County and VA for a decent paycheck.
– Provide more affordable family-size living options in VA and Montgomery County.
– Implement more transit-oriented development all over using Metro as the basis.
– Mandate that employers provide more telework options whenever feasible so that there will be less need for commuting at all!
These are just a few that I couldn’t wait to jot down. If I gave it some more thought, I’m sure I could come up with many more — all of which are desperately needed, in my opinion, to combat what is now the worst traffic in the country.
What ideas do you have? What would it take to improve your commute?
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The Power of Suggestion: Traffic Signs Could Relieve Gridlock; Alter Driving Behavior
Tell me...do you think this would work?
What if we could help ease traffic congestion by merely installing traffic signs? Nothing fancy here. These signs would simply suggest a desired driver behavior to achieve a desired outcome: moving traffic along in a more expeditious manner.
Highways all over the country already have these. Imagine my awe as I rode past, staring at them with my mouth wide open as I had an “ah-ha moment.” There was a sign that blatantly said: “Steep Upgrade, Maintain Speed.” Wow, what an idea! A sign that strongly suggests that drivers hit the gas pedal to maintain speed because — pay attention now, this is deep — we are now driving on a steep incline on a highway, and in order to not slow the people down behind us, we need to STEP ON IT. What a novel idea! Why haven’t the transportation authorities in MD, VA, and D.C. metro area caught onto this??
We could use this one, too!
Study explained traffic jams
Years ago, I remember watching a news story about a traffic study that explained why traffic jams and slowdowns occur on our highways. Among their conclusions were: (1) rubbernecking to see the source of a police stop; (2) rubbernecking due to a disabled car or accident; (3) sheer volume; (4) curvy highways; (5) hilly highways (the steeper the grade, the slower traffic gets); (6) construction and or repair.
We have many highways that are curved and are downright hilly in this area. I understand slowing down a little for curves in bad weather, but not to the degree that most people do. I’m quite sure they were built to accommodate highway speeds (at least during fair weather). But, for some reason, people don’t compensate for hills by simply accelerating. Guess they just feel that they don’t need to or are not paying enough attention to notice that their car is slowing down. I wouldn’t want to be a passenger in that car!
Wake up, people!
I believe that this problem could be helped just by strategically installing the right signage. Traffic merging onto I-95 North is always slow because there are two steep upgrades before you even get to Exit 33 Rt. 193. After this exit, traffic usually speeds up exponentially (with some exceptions, of course). I am convinced that merely suggesting that people accelerate to maintain their speed would go a long way to relieve congestion caused by hills. It’s worth a try!
Tell me…what do you think of this solution? Don’t be shy — leave a comment.
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Relieve Traffic Congestion Through Increased Use of Sustainable Affordable Public Transportation
This chart helps us evaluate which options will work best.
I can admit, I am very attached to the convenience of being able to hop in my car and go wherever I want, whenever I feel like it. It’s a necessary evil when you live in the Washington, D.C-Baltimore metro area, and I am thankful that my 13-year old Honda can still take a licking and keep on ticking.
But, by the same token, it would also be great if I could walk out my door and have several convenient affordable and viable transportation options at my disposal. This could include being able to walk, take a short and cheap bus/light rail/subway ride, or bike to my destination. If everything were so conveniently located — or at least so easy to get to—maybe I wouldn’t feel the need to always defer to my car. There are several benefits to this on all sides: improved health from more exercise, lessening my carbon footprint, saving money, etc.
One other thing that I would really like to see is more sustainable ways to get around — the apex of which would be “green” transportation options. These options would satisfy the goal of devising and implementing transport that would be bearable, equitable, and viable on the social, environmental, and economic levels.
Although the upfront costs and initial sacrifices may be significant (i.e. financial resources, worsened traffic congestion), the long-term benefits would definitely be worth it — especially when you consider that the problem will not simply “fix itself.” Since demand for public transportation solutions has quickly risen in the D.C. metro area, we need to hastily make up our minds about which solutions to use — and then implement them without further delay.
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Construction Delays – The Unintended Drama from Obama’s Recovery Act
Today, I experienced a very common frustration for those of us who commute to work everyday — construction delays. While it’s great that, due to the Economic Recovery Act, money for construction projects has been flowing into Maryland, Virginia, and D.C., the unintended result is more construction delays — and misery — for commuters.
The route that I take to work is usually heavy with traffic. I choose this route because, even with lights and traffic, it is actually more tolerable than crawling along I-495 to work everyday. And, for the past several months, I have been enduring construction delays, resulting in even more increased traffic congestion and longer commute times.
We Need a Solution
One solution that I came across was Emily Cyr’s blog on How Fix Traffic Congestion, which asserts that we could use computer software that syncopates lights with each other on major routes to minimize wait times and move traffic along more efficiently. In other words, during rush hours, these lights could be constantly adjusted to accommodate and ease the inevitable traffic ebbs/flows that occur when crews repair roads during these hours.
Montgomery County is already using a traffic control system, which apparently has had some major kinks in the past several months. Judging from how bad my commute through the county still is every day, it probably isn’t geared towards construction delay workarounds such as the ones that Brian Park at the University of VA’s Center for Transportation Studies talks about.
I think that many different solutions applied at once would be the only way that we all would experience sustained collective commuter relief. As a worker who has to commute about 25 miles to work one way every day, I would certainly appreciate the relief that this solution would provide. The sooner we implement smarter traffic control systems, the better our collective commutes will be.
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Washington DC Traffic Congestion: Several Problems
Yes, traffic has gotten much worse in the metro D.C. area. There are several problems that we have that aren’t being sufficiently addressed:
We don’t have enough roads/lanes/infrastructure to meet the demand. But there’s absolutely NO shortage of vehicles, though!
Our addiction to our vehicles has been neccessitated and fueled (pun intended) by urban sprawl due to out-of-control housing construction/expansion on every piece of land that is available.
Many of us in the Washington, D.C. area are college-educated or better. That means that the demand for white collar jobs is very high and ultracompetitive. However, most of the decent-paying (white collar) jobs are located in only a few major hubs (i.e Herdon/Tysons Corner, D.C., and Bethesda/Rockville/Silver Spring). This causes those of us who don’t also LIVE in these areas (because we can’t AFFORD it) to have to DRIVE to these areas in order to pay our bills because there are, oftentimes, no decent alternatives.
If more people had viable alternatives, like the option to telecommute, more schedule flexibility, convenient commuting/travel options, conveniently located workplaces, more affordable housing located closer to workplaces, expanded infrastructure, etc., we might really be able to lick this thing!
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Hello world! This is my first post.
Welcome to the Baltimore-DC Traffic Frustration Blog. This is a place where I will vent about my frustrations driving in the Baltimore/DC area.
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