Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

Loudoun’s Rt. 7 — Road from Hell

—

by

James A. Bacon
in

To accommodate a projected doubling of its current 50,000 cars per day, Rt. 7 near Leesburg would grow to 10 through lanes. Including turning lanes, Rt. 7 would be 17 lanes wide at the intersection with Battlefield Boulevard, according to Leesburg2day.com.

Those are the kinds of numbers being tossed around as a result of plans by The Peterson Companies to build 1,366 homes and between 1.1 million and 2 million square feet of retail, office and hotel space on land between the airport and the Dulles Greenway.

A 17-lane Rt. 7 would be wider than the Capital Beltway. Indeed, it might qualify as the widest road in Virginia. Does anyone know of any existing road with 17 lanes?

Seventeen-lane roads strike me as inherently unworkable. There is something very, very wrong with a human settlement pattern that generates so much automobile traffic and concentrates it on a single thoroughfare.

Share this article

ADVERTISEMENT

(comments below)

ADVERTISEMENT

(comments below)

Comments

10 responses to “Loudoun’s Rt. 7 — Road from Hell”

  1. Ray Hyde Avatar
    Ray Hyde

    That really is insane.

    Five two-lane roads marked at 35 mph would move far more traffic and in a manner that is at once more chaotic, more orderly, and more efficient. It is more chaotic because you have more roads going more places. It is more orderly because a two lane roads eliminates most passing and radical lane changes. It is more efficient because the lower speeds allow higher throughput, and some chance of an alternate route when needed.

    I have previoously made a similar comment about the Woodrow Wilson Bridge: three smaller spans would make more sense.

    At the same time, it is the result of deelopment regulations which mean that only the larget organizations can possibly succeed. In turn, they need giant projects to cover or spread around all the externally imposed costs.

  2. COD Avatar
    COD

    IIRC, I-85 in the Atlanta suburbs of Cobb Country is 8 lanes in each direction.

  3. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    Jim, you are correct, there is something wrong with a human settlement pattern that generates so much automobile traffic and concentrates it on a
    single thoroughfare.

    But, that’s exactly what you have w/ Rt. 7. The road is the aortic valve for dysfunctional settlement patterns and it looks like it will continue to be that way.

    When the road and traffic conditions start to affect the value of the $1 million+ homes in the area things will change. But, not until then.

  4. Ray Hyde Avatar
    Ray Hyde

    While we are on the topic of things that are insane, did anyone notice the story in the car column today about the Lexus 450h.

    This is a 336 HP, $60,000 luxury hybrid that is elegible for HOV use and tax rebates becuse it is an alternative clean fuel vehicle.

    It gets 28 mpg on the highway.

    Not bad for zero to 60 in 4.6 seconds and all the luxury you can stand.

  5. Ray Hyde Avatar
    Ray Hyde

    It is not the human settlement patterns that is the problem. It is the job concentration patterns. For more evidence that this is true, look no further than EMR’s post above.

  6. Ray Hyde Avatar
    Ray Hyde

    I’m happy to see that Jim agrees with me on something.

    “There is something very, very wrong with a human settlement pattern that generates so much automobile traffic and concentrates it on a single thoroughfare.”

    Emphasis mine.

  7. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    “There is something very, very wrong with a human settlement pattern that generates so much automobile traffic and concentrates it on a single thoroughfare.”

    Okay. Time for a reality check.

    Are those 50K cars a day (soon to be 100K) essentially travelling from homes to jobs?

    In other words, is the traffic flow mostly one way in the morning and the opposite way in the evening – as opposed to 50K worth of cars split in 25K going in one direction and 25 going in the other.. all day long?

    So.. if it mostly the former (and I suspect it is).. then tell me again about the jobs creation in terms of whether the destination of the folks on Rt 7 is an outer burb or is it further and really the exurbs?

    Then.. take a look at places like Warrenton, Culpeper, Fredericksburg, on the south.. and I suspect exurb communities in Maryland.

    Many of these are aptly referred to as “bedroom communities” for good reason because the “balance” of jobs and homes is very different than what the WaPo article was talking about.

    My point: – Outside of the DC/No Va area there are a LOT of folks who commute to/from their exurb home to DC/No Va jobs.

    These are the folks whose cars are on NoVa/Beltway roads every day and they feed into NoVa via I-95, Route 7, Route 29, etc.

    Folks should ask themselves what roads those 50K worth of cars on Route 7 are going to end up on – and then consider another 100K worth of cars coming up I-95, etc.

    Those cars end up on NoVa roads every morning and every evening. Those cars are in addition to the folks who do live and work in the Wash Metro Area and I would surmise that they comprise a significant percentage of the total traffic on the Wash Metro Area Transportation Network.

    So – give the WaPo credit for delving into the job/home balance issue but I don’t think they got far enough – to consider the impact that exurb bedroom communities are also having on congestion.

  8. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    Larry,

    MOST of the traffic in the area the article refers to heads east on Rt. 7 in the AM and west in the PM.

    As you move further eastward on Rt. 7, i.e., Fairfax County inward, there is a more balanced pattern of east/west travel.

    Does anyone know the figure for folks who commute to/from their exurb home to DC/NOVA jobs? Are we talking 20% or 30% of the workforce in NOVA?

  9. Ray Hyde Avatar
    Ray Hyde

    I suspect that there is more gradation and nuance in this tna we readily see.

    I suspect, for example, that those that live 50 miles out tend to work 25 to 50 miles out. Those that live 40 miles out tend to work 15 to 40 miles out, etc.

    In my neighborhood, and among my hay customers, I know of a number of people who bought far out only recently, and they did so knowing they would retire soon, so their commuting days are numbered. I also know of people who commute south and west rather than to NOVA. I also know of construction companies that formerly did considerable business in NOVA, but now they just turn that business down – it is too expensive and there are better opportunities closer.

    I think that people do try to make rational live work decisions, but sometimes things don’t work out, and sometimes it could take years to re-arrange your life. At any given time, nothng is perfect, even though we each continnually strive for a bettter condition.

    But the fact that you have more bidirectional travel the closer in you go is exactly a result of more jobs developing farther out. 25 years ago I was a reverse commuter on I-66 and I virtually had the west bound lanes to myself. By 15 years ago there was more west bound traffic and now most of the inner sections are bi-directional.

    So if those 50k cars are going to be prevented from clogging roads in NOVA, then the solution is to give them someplace else or someplace closer to go.

  10. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    “Does anyone know the figure for folks who commute to/from their exurb home to DC/NOVA jobs? Are we talking 20% or 30% of the workforce in NOVA?”

    This is very important info to know if folks want to better understand the problem.

    Ray said:

    “I suspect, for example, that those that live 50 miles out tend to work 25 to 50 miles out. Those that live 40 miles out tend to work 15 to 40 miles out, etc.”

    Ray – how do you reconcile this with VRE? It starts in Fredericksburg and it picks up more and more passengers as it heads north… and only when it reaches Crystal City.. does the trend go the other way.

    Would you think VRE’s commuters are different in this respect from I-95 commuters?

    If you check VDOT’s I-95 traffic counts, you’ll see the same thing. It starts out at 120K in Fredericksburg and it builds as it goes north.

    Let’s turn this around and ask if there were NO exurb commuters – would the NoVa transportation network be any different in terms of cars travelling on the network?

    In other words – back to the original statement – what percentage of NoVa traffic is exurban commuters.

    If the number is 2% then we have a fair amount of gum flapping going on for naught. But if that number is say.. 25% then I’d say… that’s a number that can not be ignored very easily if one wants to truly understand the dynamics on their way to advocating changes.

Leave a Reply

Read More