18 ms·

I'm not surprised. I've taken this road before during the 2017 Eclipse. Its a path that connects major parts of the country together, but there are no alternati

I'm not surprised. I've taken this road before during the 2017 Eclipse. Its a path that connects major parts of the country together, but there are no alternative roads to take if this one road closes. Other locations have "Backup" highways to lighten the load or otherwise take up the slack if the main road closes. Not so here. I've been told that Virginia once had plans to build additional highways / alternative roads in cases of these emergencies, where the main road gets closed off for some reason. To do this, Virginia was planning to sell some coast-space to oil rigs and fund the new infrastructure. Alas: the Deepwater Horizon spill of 2010 killed that funding plan, and with it, the plans for new highways. ----------- Instead, the state of Virginia focused on building additional lanes to the already existing highways. Which... doesn't help in these times of emergency, and still doesn't help in terms of day-to-day traffic either (most day-to-day traffic is bottlenecked at the offramps, where highways turn into traffic-light controlled, slower local roads). You need additional highways (aka: additional offramps) to truly scale day-to-day traffic. And you also need "backup highways" to handle emergency situations, such as a jack-knifed semi-truck blocking all lanes due to some snow-accident.

jdavis703 5y ago
> there are no alternative roads to take if this one road closes. US Route 1 basically parallels I-95 in most of VA. I was once detoured on it after a military HAZMAT incident. It’s slow going, but it works.
- imapeopleperson 5y ago
  ~2006?
- dragontamer 5y ago
  Route 1 seems like a local-road to me with lots of traffic lights though. I-95 works really well as long as its clear. But as soon as an emergency happens, the spillover traffic is too massive for Route 1 to ever hope to handle. An interstate-highway can't rely upon a traffic-light laden local road to handle the traffic from a 4-lane interstate. EDIT: In the case of the 2017 eclipse, the traffic was so heavy that truckers started to pile up on the side of the roads (allegedly due to the laws stating that they could only drive for X hours at a time). Losing a few lanes slowed down traffic dramatically, causing even more truckers to just pull over due to legal requirements. I don't think the GPS / Waze ever recommended for us to leave I-95 during this time, so Rt. 1 was never a consideration. ---------- A 2-lane highway without traffic lights that runs parallel would help a lot. I don't know the lay of the land in Virginia (ideally such a road would be coordinated with local suburbs / local cities to lessen day-to-day traffic as well).
  - Larrikin 5y ago
    It looks that way on Google maps maybe, but as someone who grew up in Richmond it's a route nearly all Virginians take up to DC if there is any traffic on I95 and is a well known alternative route.
  - dwater 5y ago
    US Route 1 is already an interstate highway with 4+ lanes through the area you're talking about. Development was encouraged down the I95 corridor since its creation and the density that has resulted pretty much makes this unavoidable. There was a similar situation with the Woodrow Wilson Bridge on 495 outside of DC in 1998 when it was closed due to a jumper during afternoon rush hour, and the traffic jam lasted overnight despite there being alternate major routes in every direction. The problem is that the bridge carried more traffic than all of the alternate routes put together (I'm assuming based on my experience). https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/local/longterm/wilson/wilson110598.htm https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/local/longterm/wilson/...
  - mmcconnell1618 5y ago
    301 through Maryland is the next closest highway that has fewer traffic lights.
- shadowgovt 5y ago
  The former Jefferson Davis Highway (now Emancipation Highway) has never had the capacity to back-stop I-95. It can be used in emergencies, but only if one wants to get stuck in a slightly different place with an occasional soda machine within walking distance... A feature one stuck on that road may be able to take advantage of, given the speed one will be going. And I don't imagine it would be much use in a sudden-onset winter storm, since it's right next to I-95; it's going to get blanketed about as fast as I-95 will, and most of it lacks enough shoulder for plows to get along it if it gets jammed with traffic.
azylman 5y ago
No comments on emergency situations, but wanted to call out one thing: > You need additional highways (aka: additional offramps) to truly scale day-to-day traffic Additional highways are at-best a stop-gap for day-to-day traffic, never a solution, due to induced demand [1]. You really need large-scale investments in public transportation for this. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand#Effect_in_transportation_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand#Effect_in_trans...
- whatshisface 5y ago
  I've never understood how inducing demand doesn't count as success. That means people want to use the road, doesn't it? It's almost like saying that releasing new software doesn't do anything to help users, because it increases the demand for software by the virtue of its own utility more than it reduces the demand for software by keeping people busy.
  - azylman 5y ago
    It depends what your success criteria is. It's true, you've successfully increased the throughput of the transit network, but you haven't done anything to improve transit times - you just have more people stuck in traffic now. There are other ways you could have spent that same amount of money (public transit) that both increase the throughput of the network _and_ improve transit times.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - njarboe 5y ago
      Not if you build enough roads. This argument just does not hold up. There was less time wasted stuck in traffic in the past. Go with tunnels underground so as not the create the large problems with having surface roads. If your idea theory is right, why don't we just stop maintaining all roads, shut them down, and save a lot of money, if new roads are useless.
zitterbewegung 5y ago
Well there is US Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, that is stuck in this situation (But not in immediate danger ).
- dragontamer 5y ago
  Tim Kaine maybe could push through a US Senate bill for more infrastructure, but that's really high level and may not necessarily benefit Virginia directly. The ones who need convincing are the local officials, not the national-level ones.
drewcoo 5y ago
Sounds peaceful. If it were of military importance, that would not be the case.
cafard 5y ago
Well, there is Route 1, if you can get to it. Back in I think 1995, somebody rolled a tanker full of sulphuric acid on I-95 southbound about Fredericksburg. It took a long time to get to the Acquia exit from just past the previous one, and Route 1 didn't move that well once we were there.
throwaway0a5e 5y ago
>Instead, the state of Virginia focused on building additional lanes to the already existing highways They do this because they get to turn the extras into toll/HOV lanes and rake in dough without making tons of people's lives worse and getting pressure put on them to not be jerks like that. Follow the incentives.
lsllc 5y ago
If VADOT were unable to sand and plow I-95 for this storm then presumably they'd have the same problem with the backup highway. I suppose given a bad crash then the backup highway would help, but in that case, detouring off the highway between the crash-adjacent exits would work too.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
michaelnik 5y ago
Tokyo: In 2007, _65_percent_ of trips within a 50 mile radius were by mass transit. Overall transit usage is [...] approximately double that of all combined usage in the United States and nearly 10 times that of Paris [http://www.newgeography.com/content/002923-the-evolving-urban-form-tokyo http://www.newgeography.com/content/002923-the-evolving-urba...]
jcranmer 5y ago
> Other locations have "Backup" highways to lighten the load or otherwise take up the slack if the main road closes. Not so here. Well... not really. Taking the 95 corridor in the Northeast as an example, the only places with alternative highways are 95/295 between DC and Baltimore, 295/NJT in lower New Jersey, and Merritt Parkway/95 in Connecticut to New Haven. In all of the other segments, 95 doesn't have a close-ish parallel highway to take off traffic. And when you dig deeper into traffic statistics, the traffic tends to be heavy on both segments at the same time. That is, there are two highways there because the traffic needs require there to be two highways; the second highway isn't just "merely" a there-for-when-the-first-one-is-full kind of highway. And induced demand basically says that it's impossible to have that kind of highway setup.

jdavis703 5y ago

> there are no alternative roads to take if this one road closes. US Route 1 basically parallels I-95 in most of VA. I was once detoured on it after a military HAZMAT incident. It’s slow going, but it works.

imapeopleperson 5y ago
~2006?
dragontamer 5y ago
Route 1 seems like a local-road to me with lots of traffic lights though. I-95 works really well as long as its clear. But as soon as an emergency happens, the spillover traffic is too massive for Route 1 to ever hope to handle. An interstate-highway can't rely upon a traffic-light laden local road to handle the traffic from a 4-lane interstate. EDIT: In the case of the 2017 eclipse, the traffic was so heavy that truckers started to pile up on the side of the roads (allegedly due to the laws stating that they could only drive for X hours at a time). Losing a few lanes slowed down traffic dramatically, causing even more truckers to just pull over due to legal requirements. I don't think the GPS / Waze ever recommended for us to leave I-95 during this time, so Rt. 1 was never a consideration. ---------- A 2-lane highway without traffic lights that runs parallel would help a lot. I don't know the lay of the land in Virginia (ideally such a road would be coordinated with local suburbs / local cities to lessen day-to-day traffic as well).
- Larrikin 5y ago
  It looks that way on Google maps maybe, but as someone who grew up in Richmond it's a route nearly all Virginians take up to DC if there is any traffic on I95 and is a well known alternative route.
- dwater 5y ago
  US Route 1 is already an interstate highway with 4+ lanes through the area you're talking about. Development was encouraged down the I95 corridor since its creation and the density that has resulted pretty much makes this unavoidable. There was a similar situation with the Woodrow Wilson Bridge on 495 outside of DC in 1998 when it was closed due to a jumper during afternoon rush hour, and the traffic jam lasted overnight despite there being alternate major routes in every direction. The problem is that the bridge carried more traffic than all of the alternate routes put together (I'm assuming based on my experience). https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/local/longterm/wilson/wilson110598.htm https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/local/longterm/wilson/...
- mmcconnell1618 5y ago
  301 through Maryland is the next closest highway that has fewer traffic lights.
shadowgovt 5y ago
The former Jefferson Davis Highway (now Emancipation Highway) has never had the capacity to back-stop I-95. It can be used in emergencies, but only if one wants to get stuck in a slightly different place with an occasional soda machine within walking distance... A feature one stuck on that road may be able to take advantage of, given the speed one will be going. And I don't imagine it would be much use in a sudden-onset winter storm, since it's right next to I-95; it's going to get blanketed about as fast as I-95 will, and most of it lacks enough shoulder for plows to get along it if it gets jammed with traffic.

azylman 5y ago

No comments on emergency situations, but wanted to call out one thing: > You need additional highways (aka: additional offramps) to truly scale day-to-day traffic Additional highways are at-best a stop-gap for day-to-day traffic, never a solution, due to induced demand [1]. You really need large-scale investments in public transportation for this. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand#Effect_in_transportation_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand#Effect_in_trans...

whatshisface 5y ago
I've never understood how inducing demand doesn't count as success. That means people want to use the road, doesn't it? It's almost like saying that releasing new software doesn't do anything to help users, because it increases the demand for software by the virtue of its own utility more than it reduces the demand for software by keeping people busy.
- azylman 5y ago
  It depends what your success criteria is. It's true, you've successfully increased the throughput of the transit network, but you haven't done anything to improve transit times - you just have more people stuck in traffic now. There are other ways you could have spent that same amount of money (public transit) that both increase the throughput of the network _and_ improve transit times.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - njarboe 5y ago
    Not if you build enough roads. This argument just does not hold up. There was less time wasted stuck in traffic in the past. Go with tunnels underground so as not the create the large problems with having surface roads. If your idea theory is right, why don't we just stop maintaining all roads, shut them down, and save a lot of money, if new roads are useless.

zitterbewegung 5y ago

Well there is US Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, that is stuck in this situation (But not in immediate danger ).

dragontamer 5y ago
Tim Kaine maybe could push through a US Senate bill for more infrastructure, but that's really high level and may not necessarily benefit Virginia directly. The ones who need convincing are the local officials, not the national-level ones.

drewcoo 5y ago

Sounds peaceful. If it were of military importance, that would not be the case.

cafard 5y ago

Well, there is Route 1, if you can get to it. Back in I think 1995, somebody rolled a tanker full of sulphuric acid on I-95 southbound about Fredericksburg. It took a long time to get to the Acquia exit from just past the previous one, and Route 1 didn't move that well once we were there.

throwaway0a5e 5y ago

>Instead, the state of Virginia focused on building additional lanes to the already existing highways They do this because they get to turn the extras into toll/HOV lanes and rake in dough without making tons of people's lives worse and getting pressure put on them to not be jerks like that. Follow the incentives.

lsllc 5y ago

If VADOT were unable to sand and plow I-95 for this storm then presumably they'd have the same problem with the backup highway. I suppose given a bad crash then the backup highway would help, but in that case, detouring off the highway between the crash-adjacent exits would work too.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

michaelnik 5y ago

Tokyo: In 2007, _65_percent_ of trips within a 50 mile radius were by mass transit. Overall transit usage is [...] approximately double that of all combined usage in the United States and nearly 10 times that of Paris [http://www.newgeography.com/content/002923-the-evolving-urban-form-tokyo http://www.newgeography.com/content/002923-the-evolving-urba...]

jcranmer 5y ago

> Other locations have "Backup" highways to lighten the load or otherwise take up the slack if the main road closes. Not so here. Well... not really. Taking the 95 corridor in the Northeast as an example, the only places with alternative highways are 95/295 between DC and Baltimore, 295/NJT in lower New Jersey, and Merritt Parkway/95 in Connecticut to New Haven. In all of the other segments, 95 doesn't have a close-ish parallel highway to take off traffic. And when you dig deeper into traffic statistics, the traffic tends to be heavy on both segments at the same time. That is, there are two highways there because the traffic needs require there to be two highways; the second highway isn't just "merely" a there-for-when-the-first-one-is-full kind of highway. And induced demand basically says that it's impossible to have that kind of highway setup.