Driving in the DC Metro Region (Arlington, Alexandria: home, wedding, construction)

[ersatz]

As someone who has commuted for years (decades even) around the DMV, I enjoyed this WTOP mocktorial about driving in the area.

https://wtop.com/dc-transit/2021/05/...tions-capital/

And for that poster who asked in another thread when the I-66 construction will be completed

Originally Posted by Turnerbro

Does anyone have an update on when I-66 will be completed? Seems like it’s been under construction for ever.

WTOP's intrepid traffic reporter Dave Dildine supplies the answer "Interstate 66 has been under construction since antiquity. Road work is scheduled for completion minutes before the ultimate heat death of the universe. Rest assured, it will be humanity’s greatest legacy."

[BOS2IAD]

Thanks for sharing!

Driving in the DMV is such fun...not

[nm9stheham]

LOL.... that was good. My first drive around DC in winter was memorable.... heading home (to Salem) from Ft Monmouth NJ 2 days before New Year's Day. Snowed 1-2 inches around DC.... I started counting cars off the road just before I-95 reached I-495 in MD, and lost count at something over 100 cars off the highway before getting out of the DSDC area. Coming from the mountains where winter driving is far more challenging, I was amazed.


Ya'll have my sympathy! On the rare occasions when my son and I get any work around DC, we jack up our fees... we call it 'combat pay' LOL

[Veritas Vincit]

I learned driving in the D.C. area. As a result I pretty much have no expectation of my fellow drivers knowing anything about driving.

[zenith32]

The first time I properly drove around DC's actual city streets I had a near continuous headache from the extremely packed and slow speed roads (whereas I'm used to fairly open avenues with speeds of between 40 and 60 MPH). Honestly it's about the least car friendly city I've ever been to and I've driven around places like downtown Chicago and San Fransisco.

[choff5]

Spot on. Forty plus years ago I moved from the farmland to Arlington high rise as a newlywed and, honest, learned the area thanks to a mini puzzle map of DC and the near in areas I took apart and put together. Then I remember how good I thought I was driving into DC by the Lincoln Memorial, spotting the two gold lions as where I needed to look for when leaving, not realizing there two pairs of them until I was along the Potomac by the Kennedy Center headed to Georgetown instead of Arlington. I always said if I could avoid the state avenues, once described as drunks wandering through the night, I could get anywhere in DC thanks to their grid.

[Old Dominionite]

The guide is spot on. Well done, Davie Dildine.

Years ago my wife and I were married in Georgetown. We had our reception in Alexandria. We had a lot of guests from out-of-town staying in Old Town. This was a few years before smartphones. I remember driving from Old Town to Georgetown one morning in order to write down directions for our guests to follow. I gave up when trying to describe how to transition from the northbound GW Parkway to westbound US 50 (and the Rosslyn exit) without accidentally winding up on the Memorial Bridge, in Arlington Cemetery, or heading to the Pentagon...

..we ended up paying for shuttles to transport out guests to and from the wedding site. It was money well-spent.

Much more recently, I remember when the posting of I-695 in D.C. annoyed Bob Marbourg on WTOP given that the nearby beltway around Baltimore has always carried that designation. When giving traffic reports, Marbourg started calling the Baltimore beltway "the real I-695."

[Veritas Vincit]

I'd like to add to the article by mentioning Dalecarlia Parkway in NW, the worst road surface I've seen outside rural Eastern Europe. If you use that road, it will take about a $100 in value off your car every day.



With regard to the center lane on Chain Bridge and Canal Rd (which I both used frequently), there's an interesting psychological phenomenon. When the road is relatively empty then indeed the center lane tends to be unused because no-one wants to be the 1st guy to use it and be found to be *the* idiot on the wrong side of the road, but if there's a few cars on it (i.e. at some point a guy was confident enough to take the plunge and at least one other person followed), it will get congested as well during rush hour. Herd instinct at work.


I'd also like to add that the Arlington side of the Chain Bridge is really something of a wildcard for people not used to it. Coming from D.C. the road slightly curves to the left immediately after the bridge and there's a light following the curve. Now when the road is busy and you want to go onto Glebe, you will want to be in that center lane (i.e. the lane people tend to not want to use on the bridge) as the right lane will also be a turning lane and if you stay in that, you'll hold up a lot of right-turning vehicles who will not hesitate to wildly honk and yell at you as they wait impatiently.



But that's only the first challenge. The next one is that immediately after the light the two lanes will merge and you need to switch back to the right as going straight onward from the center lane will lead you into oncoming traffic. You will then need to make a left turn and not stay on the road going straight ahead (which is really just turning into a parking lot for a trailhead), and shortly thereafter you'll have to go into a long right turn, but you need to be careful as about 2/3 through that long right turn, another road will split off also turning right. In other words, you need to keep turning right, but not too right.



Did I mention it's all uphill and you're in a forest and there's no lighting whatsoever other than what's provided by other vehicles? If you managed to stick with it so far, you will eventually emerge at the top of the hill and you need to take a bit of a leap of faith here as you have no visibility of where the road is heading at all. If you're going at a reasonable speed, you should be able to stay toward the right and thus avoid oncoming traffic. If you manage this, you should be good to go after another long winding left curve. Aside from driving this myself, I've also been a repeat passenger in cabs and Ubers on this route, and you can almost count on the driver making at least one error in this section.


Heading into D.C., i.e. the other direction, this section is infamous for accidents as well. Glebe is a divided large highway and without any traffic lights for about 1/2 a mile ahead of it, so people pick up speed. And of course, in this direction the road is going downhill ahead of the bridge. So the road suddenly gets curvy and small and also downhill and people may enter the section going 50-60. Cars seem to go off the roadway here pretty frequently. And as a bonus, the traffic light ahead of Chain Bridge awaits you as you come out of that section of the road. You can expect the rear of a car waiting at that light to emerge in front of you at any point during that curvy downhill section. Good luck coming to a complete halt quickly enough while flying down that winding road.



I didn't intend to write an essay about it..but I think it's a pretty good indication of traffic challenges around here. NoVa essentially has an archaic road system that would seem pretty familiar to residents of other hilly Eastern inland cities, but with the caveat of major metropolitan Northeast Corridor level of traffic and drivers lacking intimate familiarity with the roads (smaller cities tend to have fewer major routes and fewer people new to the area).