commute from urbana (Bethesda, Gaithersburg, Rockville: work, house, moving to)

[punkylunky]

We're thinking about moving to Urbana, MD. My wife works in Rockville. What's the commute like using back roads?

[home4saleMD]

I currently live in Urbana and commute to Bethesda which is a little further than Rockville. There are some good options for back roads to Rockville. If you look at a map, 80 to 109 to 28 is usually a good option. The traffic on 80 and 109 is usually not too heavy. Sometimes 28 can be a bit heavy but there are also other options from there that bring you into Gaithersburg (such as 117 and 118) and then you can just go down 270 a few exits. There is also 355 which parallels 270. Sometimes this is a good option too but it tends to get the "bail out" traffic if there is an incident on 270. Another option is if you can vary your timing, going a little later in the morning, sometimes 270 is open.

[JGAKATS]

How far north does I-270 southbound backup during the AM rush? What time do these backups usually begin?

[talk2u]

She could also catch a commuter bus to right into Rockville. Go to Maryland Transit Administration for the complete schedule. I used to ride this bus service into DC and it was a very nice and relaxing ride. I usually slept or read...much better than the stress of driving.

[home4saleMD]

The backups on 270 really vary each day dependent on the weather and time of year. Obviously the summer and government holidays are great commute days! On an average day I have found that the backups tend to be worse earlier in the day - around 6:30-7am and tend to loosen up in the 8am hour. There are of course exceptions to this but in those cases, I use alternate routes described above. If I had to pinpoint trouble areas - probably 109 near the truck scales and around 124, Montgomery Village Ave.

[Allie Montgomery]

Not bad, I live in Urbana and have lived there since 1985. It is about a 45 minute commute and once you get to know the area, there are several back road routes, some are nice drives with beautiful scenery. This area depends on what time you leave the house in the morning, if you leave at a certain time there is no traffice you wait another 10 minutes and you are wondering what happened, the traffic is backed up!