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.