Dear Dr. Gridlock:
I grew up in Fairfax County, so I've seen the area grow dramatically. I'm concerned about the latest growth trend along Interstate 66 west of the Beltway. Apartment buildings are going up all along I-66. Traffic on I-66 and connecting roads will be intolerable in a few years.
Is the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors calculating the impact on traffic before approving these projects?
A huge development is proposed next to I-66 and the Vienna Metro station near the Beltway. Developers want to build eight high-rise buildings, ranging from 10 to 14 stories, plus smaller condominium buildings and townhouses. All told, it would add 2,350 housing units. How will I-66 handle all of this traffic?
If this growth is approved, the junction of I-66 and the Beltway will become the next Mixing Bowl.
Mark Tipton
Fairfax
You're right to be concerned. Consider the traffic on I-66 now, with stop-and-go segments for five hours each morning and evening and increasing traffic on weekends. Add to that traffic from the eight high-rise apartment buildings you describe as proposed for Vienna. If we keep pouring more and more vehicles onto our clogged road system, everybody loses.
Does the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors consider traffic impact when it approves development? Apparently not. Consider that in recent years the county has approved a massive residential and commercial development bounded by I-66, Route 29 and the Fairfax County Parkway. The center of this is a spiffy, upscale commercial center called Fairfax Corner.
While this pops up on the landscape, there are no significant improvements to any of those boundary roads. The state also has no money to make improvements, now or in the foreseeable future. Yet thousands more vehicles will pour onto these roads.
At some point we will reach a saturation point where nobody moves at all. The county supervisors seem to be in a race to get there.
Futile Hunt for Exit
Dear Dr. Gridlock:
Recently my husband and I went to the Eastern Shore using a route you suggested, which was far better than driving halfway around the Beltway. (We live in Chantilly.)
The route we took was Interstate 66 to Route 110 around the Pentagon, then picking up Interstate 395 north to Interstate 295 north. We didn't realize that I-395 divides, so we wound up going through the tunnels underneath Capitol Hill. But eventually we came to New York Avenue and headed east, so we were fine.
However, we tried to take your route home using Route 50 to I-295 south, then crossing the Sousa Bridge and picking up I-395 and Route 110 again. We obviously missed signs, an exit or something; we didn't see any exit off I-295 for Pennsylvania Avenue going west, only Pennsylvania Avenue going east.
So we remained southbound on I-295, looking for an exit to I-395, and didn't find that, either. We wound up staying on I-295 until we got to the Beltway and crossed the Woodrow Wilson Bridge into Virginia.
