Congestion by Distraction

One of my pet peeves is when construction companies leave equipment along side the road on which they are working. It's even worse if that equipment involves electric variable message signs that continue to display a message. Case in point is the workzone on the George Washington Parkway near Route 123. In both directions they have erected signs announcing the hours of construction, the lanes impacted and an admonishment to slow down because they will be congestion. The problem is that these signs have been left on more often than not until well after the work has been done for the day. The resulting congestion goes for miles as drivers slow down to either read the sign or heed its message that lanes are closed. Of course, the lanes do not remain blocked during the rush hours but some drivers actually heed these messages and act accordingly by slowing down or even changing lanes to get out of the one that was to be closed. Seems a simple task that kids are taught at an early age: when you leave a room or a construction project, please turn off the lights or, in this case, the signs. Thank you.

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I meant to add another thought the other day when writing about traffic signals. It seems to me that traffic engineers could help the flow of traffic a great deal by timing the lights to match the speed limit that has been set or by changing the speed to match the timing of the traffic signals. I drive a stretch of road on a regular basis where the speed limit is set at 30 MPH. The problem is that about every third light or so that you come to has or is turning red. Many drivers that use this road, me included, know that if you drive at a steady 40 miles an hour you will hit every one of those lights while they are still green.  That means that, through the training of light sequencing, drivers become law-breakers. As you might imagine the jurisdiction has installed signs that state that the speed limit there is "photo enforced."  It's not yet but it apparently will be now that drivers have been taught to exceed that speed.

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I note with some glee that the U.S. Department of Transportation says we drove 12.2 billion fewer miles in June than in the same month last year.  That is an incredible number but it begs a few questions.  Specifically, will this willingness to not drive carry over from the summer vacation season to fall when many look for new modes of transportation to get to and from work?  What about those poor oil companies now that we are using 800,000 gallons a day less than we did before? How will they manage to survive as more and more people leave their cars and SUVs in the garage? Oh yeah, Exxon/Mobil still managed to squeak out an $11.68-billion profit in the second quarter of this year even with all those people not buying gasoline. Now that's a pretty good trick.

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Steve Eldridge is a long-time reporter, observer and commentator on the Washington region's transportation issues. You can contact him directly by writing to: Steve@SprawlandCrawl.com. Unless otherwise requested, letters or portions of letters can be used within future columns. Letter writers will be identified by their first name and city/neighborhood.

Comments

[David]

Another thing that will fill you with glee is this: some SUV owners are leaving there vehicles in parking lots with the keys in the ignition while they go shopping...in the hope that somebody will steal the dinosaur! Isn't that hilarious? The insurance value now exceeds the trade-in value for the first time.