Traffic, Here, Is Ass

Illustrative of how dicked-up traffic is in the NoVA suburbs of DC:

Today is the last day at this job for a frequent co-worker of mine. Originally, they were going to have a going-away lunch for him. They rescheduled to a 15:00-17:00 after-work event. I got into work ass-early, today, expecting to leave for the day in time for the original lunch-window. Instead, I ended up coming home - figuring that, since the event-site is four miles from my house, I'd just drive back.

Unfortunately, that four miles is constrained by a bridge from NoVA to MD. Waze was showing red all over the damned place, already, with a projected drive time of forty minutes. I got to my route decision-point - the ramp onto the highway that crosses the river - and opted to turn-back. Traffic from the highway was backed up past the ramp and through the next-closest traffic light. No go.

Called my friend up to convey my regrets.

Need to Stop Listening to the Radio

When Donna and I take the SUV out, she frequently has the station on WTOP. For her, it's just background noise and easily ignored. With my inability to filter, I get stuck listening to each and every story they drone out. Because the programming effects us differently (Donna not at all and me listening), Donna frequently talks over things - with a special nack for being most radio-obliterating right at the critical part of a given news report. Simply put, I hate listening to news radio when Donna's in the car. This is not to say that I'm fond of having the news on, in the first place: generally, all I'm hearing on news programming is "news of the annoyingly stupid".

Today was another exercise in the "news of the annoyingly stupid". The 9/11 commemorartion riders came through DC on their 1800-strong motorcycle convoy. Ok... First, this weekend isn't 9/11 - it's not even September. So, why this weekend (and, no, I don't care enough to Google for it). Secondly: why try to stream an 1800 motorcycle convoy through one of the worst traffic regions in the nation during rushhour???

Yeah, I know I'm a cranky bastard on my best days, but nothing about this debacle made sense. On top of it, it made little sense to me that the ride-supporters were chapped by the locals who had complaints about the timing of the ride (not the ride itself, mind you, just the timing). I get that people like to commemorate major events. I get that DC was tied to 9/11 by the fact that the Pentagon was one of the sites directly impacted by the events of that day. However, I think it's at least as selfish of the riders to time their event as they did as the ride-supporters seem to think people like me are for not liking the inconvenience it caused.

Unfortunately, a lot of people think that just because something is "for a good cause" that makes everything about how it's conducted is justafiable. It's the same effect that powers all the legal abuses and shortcuts because of "think of the children". To the people in the 1800-motorcycle convoy, it's just a ride to commemorate a tragedy. To the people that live here, along the pathway of that convoy it's more than just inconvenience, it's lost time and lost money. The extra time in traffic means wasted gas - and gas, particularly lately, is decidedly not free. The extra time in traffic means time spent in traffic hell that could be better spent with family, friends, etc. Time has value and for the sake of 1800 riders, tends of thousands of locals were compelled to spend their time in a way that they might have otherwise more-constructively spent it. Some people, anticipating the hell that the convoy was going to cause, opted to take off work. That's vacation days that they won't have to spend elsewhere. That's work-productivity lost at what might have been a critical time in their job-cycle.

But, hey, at least 1800 riders got to commemorate 9/11. Fuck everyone else.

Tell me, again, what that commemoration did for the people who died on 9/11? At least the Rolling Thunder folks do their stuff on a holiday.

What's So Hard About "One Way"?

What do you think this sign means?

I live in a small sub-division comprised of narrow, one-way streets. Signs, just like the above, are all over the place. If you're at an intersection in my neighborhood, there's either a "One Way" sign, a "Do Not Enter" sign or both. Even absent those signs, the streets' rights of way are only one car width wide when you subtract the on-street parking on both sides: all the parked cars are faced in the direction of the one-way flow.

Somehow, all of these indicators of the one-way nature of my neighborhood's streets don't seem to manage to breach many drivers' awarenesses. On a daily basis, there's usually someone going the wrong way down one or more of the streets in my neighborhood. Even worse, these twits are usually speeding.

Tonight, Donna had to run out to (the soon to be shuttered) local Shoppers Food Warehouse to pick up some last minute cooking supplies. I was trying to watch football. I heard the familiar sound of her Saturn pulling-in to park. Then, I heard shrieking. I shoved on my slippers and ran outside to find out what the commotion was. As I got out the front door, a primer-grey Ford van was speeding away, the wrong way, down the street that Ts into our street.

At first, I figured, "Donna's trying to yell at someone they're going the wrong way." As I said, it's fairly much of a daily occurrence. However, her tenor was a lot more strident and frantic. So, I tried to sort out why she was so keyed-up. Apparently, the initial "wrong way" screaming she'd done was because the van had been going the wrong way down our street. The driver had apparently stopped, turned around (to, presumably start driving in the correct direction) and hit a car parked in front of one of our neighbors' houses. I'd come out just in time to see the guy speeding away from the collision (and doing so the wrong way down a different street).

I asked, "did you get his plate". Sadly, she'd not gotten the plate, as she'd been too frantic trying to get the go to stop. I was just getting my phone out to report the hit-and-run when the same van I'd seen speeding off was coming back up the street.

I'd tried flagging the driver down. At first, he made like he was going to try to get by me, but eventually pulled to the curb. As he was backing up, I took a picture of his plate (lest I forget the plate number in the excitement) and then called the police.

To their credit, Fairfax county definitely gives you your money's worth on EMS for your taxes. A cruiser was there in under ten minutes from the time I'd hit "send" on my cellphone.

I gave the cop a brief summary of the situation and took Donna into the house to calm down.
It's quite likely our collective reaction was out of scale. I dunno. It's just tiring to have idiots speeding the wrong way down our streets, particularly at night. Capping it off with hitting a neighbor's car and initially driving off does nothing to reduce the agitation of things. Trying to use the excuse "I was lost" not only doesn't excuse the act, it pisses us off worse. I mean, when I'm in unfamiliar areas, I try extra hard to follow street signs and not speed - particularly at night.

Ugh.

Finally Figured It Out

I'd always wondered why MD-plated drivers immediately dive into the express lanes when merging onto highways. There've been too many occasions to count where, while speeding down the highway in one of the leftern lanes, I'll see a MD-plated driver enter the highway and immediately make a bee-line for the leftern lanes, even when going considerably slower than the people in those lanes. My usual reaction, aside from the cursing and having to take myself out of cruise control (and dump speed), has been to think, "what the fuck are you doing."

This morning, as I was getting on I95 to go to work, I finally figured it out. After 17 years of driving in the DC area, I finally had that "aha!" moment. As I (and an entire line of cars) was getting ready to merge onto I95 from the Telegraph Road interchange, the oncoming traffic in the lane I needed to get into vacated for one of the leftern lanes. That is, all but one car. This car was a MD-plated car that had been in one of the leftern lanes. This jackhole saw that a lane to his right was opening up, so, he tromped his accelerator (well, as much as someone in a Ford Focus can) and went for it.

It was then that I realized, "ah, they dive left to avoid the asshole that's going to run into them if they don't"

Commuting Disaster

Today was, apparently, infrastructure Armageddon day. Within a couple miles of my house, there were two water main breaks (one in my neighborhood), a utility pole down and miscellaneous construction projects. In the end, it took me 47 minutes to go just two miles of the 19 miles I have to cover to get to work.

The traffic snarls also very clearly illustrated just how many assholes like to use my neighborhood as a cut-through to get from Telegraph road to Kings Highway (or the reverse). It also illustrated how many people use both my neighborhood and the next subdivision over to get from US-1 to Telegraph Road.

Ugh. What a nightmare.

All the obvious cut-throughs make me wish the entrance roads to our neighborhood(s) were like some of the streets I saw in Amsterdaam (you have to have a card-key or get authorized by one of the neighborhood residents in order for electronic roadblocks to be cleared for you).

Stupidity Tax

Pretty much, that's how I look at moving violations (and similar fines). Mostly, you get nailed when you're doing something stupid, being impatient or just being inattentive.

Today, I got hit with a stupidity-tax by way of the Fairfax County police department. I was leaving work and my GPS alerted me to a major traffic problem on my usual route home. So, I took its suggestion and went a "back way". Unfortunately, not being familiar with it, I ended up "being stupid" and got nailed for it. Apparently, in Fairfax County, if you pull onto the shoulder before the lane markings officially designate it as the turn lane, it's a violation (specifically, "passing on the shoulder").

Oh well. Should be interesting to see how much fifty yards costs me.

At least the cop was really cool and professional about it. Given the horror-shows that are other local jurisdictions (I'm looking at you, PG County PD), it's nice to know that your local police act like professionals. Too bad the twat who got pulled over with me had to turn into a whiny bitch. As it was, from request to pull over to issuance of citation, I only lost six minutes of time - less time than what the GPS said getting stuck on my normal route would have cost me. Dunno how much time she was going to waste trying to fight a ticket she surely deserved.

Rain and Traffic

Suppose I should head out, early, so that I can navigate the traffic idiocy this rain will have created... No matter how much or how little rain we get, people, invariably, lose their freaking minds because of it. It's almost as bad as getting snow. Oh well, at least there's actual flooding to justify some of the nonsense, today.

Could I Get that in the Form of a Graph?

My love for my fellow man is inversely proportional to time spent in traffic or retail establishments

This Is Not Bumper Cars

Just because you couldn't be bothered to adjust for traffic doesn't mean I'm crossing double-yellow so you can dodge into my lane