Here come the Hot Lanes
Bensblurb # 595 3/4/11
(For friends and fans living beyond Greater Stafford, this will be of academic interest at most...Unless you love to see the travails of creeping urbanization. Ben B.)
Hot lanes are coming...Great ?
So it looks like we’ll get hot lanes on I-95 down to Garrisonville Road. Someday. I hope I’ll still be around to see it happen.
Of course, my perspective is mainly as a casual observer, thank you very much, not a harassed commuter. But not completely casual. For right at our front door of Aquia Harbour, my beloved place, the southbound commuter hot lanes will dump onto Garrisonville Road and vicinity. I can think of no worse place on the Stafford stretch of I-95 to end it. What a mess that will be.
Surely our wacky parallel intersection problems of U.S. 1 and I-95 and the peculiar ramps will have to be fixed. And what, pray tell, is the sense of making Garrisonville Road an even busier pathway to...pristinely rural Fauquier County?
For our longtime residents who still long for a bygone, less crowded environment, lots of luck. The only way for that to happen, won’t. As Ronald Reagan once said, “..Government is not the solution to the problem, government is the problem.”
I’ll say. The end of Stafford’s tranquility came with the expansions of Quantico, and then the BRAC base-closing edicts that are luring even more bureaucrats and their hangers-on to ratcheer.
Hello, congestion, in spades. If you think those Rte 610 commuter lots are overcrowded now, just wait.
Looking on the bright side, however, we’ll see an influx of commuters who have lived up north seeking both the convenience of the hot lanes and the cheaper housing down here. Our real estate values will arise from the toilet.
And if North Stafford gets really desperate for commuter parking lots, here’s a suggestion. Many of Aquia Harbour’s 2,500 home-owning commuters would welcome parking virtually next door. To wit: The 35-acre plot of Aquia Harbour’s undeveloped and adjoining land very near U.S. 1 and just north of Harpoon Drive.
We should recruit Stafford supervisor Bob Woodson, in whose district the land lays, to champion such a development before he leaves office next fall. Lots of luck on that.
Now bear with me for a few remembrances. Commuting used to be hardly any problem back in the good old days (1978) when I and my family first relocated here voluntarily from Falls Church. We had a vanpool that organized just down the block, at the tennis courts. And our travel to downtown Washington took less than 1-1/2 hours, and just as fast on return.
There were no restricted lanes, just two lanes each way. Of course, that was when Aquia Harbour counted only 325 homeowners and our own section three was then only developer Bill Roth’s fondest dream. Garrisonville Road had its sole stoplight at U.S. 1. Stafford’s 40,000 residents (129,000 now) had no drug store within the county and only one high school. It would be three long years before Ronald Reagan became our nation’s leader.
My first opinion column on this page appeared in March 1997, and you have tolerated me, most of the time, ever since. Thanks kindly. An early concern of mine was that I would eventually run out of ideas to write about.
...Not yet.
(For friends and fans living beyond Greater Stafford, this will be of academic interest at most...Unless you love to see the travails of creeping urbanization. Ben B.)
Hot lanes are coming...Great ?
So it looks like we’ll get hot lanes on I-95 down to Garrisonville Road. Someday. I hope I’ll still be around to see it happen.
Of course, my perspective is mainly as a casual observer, thank you very much, not a harassed commuter. But not completely casual. For right at our front door of Aquia Harbour, my beloved place, the southbound commuter hot lanes will dump onto Garrisonville Road and vicinity. I can think of no worse place on the Stafford stretch of I-95 to end it. What a mess that will be.
Surely our wacky parallel intersection problems of U.S. 1 and I-95 and the peculiar ramps will have to be fixed. And what, pray tell, is the sense of making Garrisonville Road an even busier pathway to...pristinely rural Fauquier County?
For our longtime residents who still long for a bygone, less crowded environment, lots of luck. The only way for that to happen, won’t. As Ronald Reagan once said, “..Government is not the solution to the problem, government is the problem.”
I’ll say. The end of Stafford’s tranquility came with the expansions of Quantico, and then the BRAC base-closing edicts that are luring even more bureaucrats and their hangers-on to ratcheer.
Hello, congestion, in spades. If you think those Rte 610 commuter lots are overcrowded now, just wait.
Looking on the bright side, however, we’ll see an influx of commuters who have lived up north seeking both the convenience of the hot lanes and the cheaper housing down here. Our real estate values will arise from the toilet.
And if North Stafford gets really desperate for commuter parking lots, here’s a suggestion. Many of Aquia Harbour’s 2,500 home-owning commuters would welcome parking virtually next door. To wit: The 35-acre plot of Aquia Harbour’s undeveloped and adjoining land very near U.S. 1 and just north of Harpoon Drive.
We should recruit Stafford supervisor Bob Woodson, in whose district the land lays, to champion such a development before he leaves office next fall. Lots of luck on that.
Now bear with me for a few remembrances. Commuting used to be hardly any problem back in the good old days (1978) when I and my family first relocated here voluntarily from Falls Church. We had a vanpool that organized just down the block, at the tennis courts. And our travel to downtown Washington took less than 1-1/2 hours, and just as fast on return.
There were no restricted lanes, just two lanes each way. Of course, that was when Aquia Harbour counted only 325 homeowners and our own section three was then only developer Bill Roth’s fondest dream. Garrisonville Road had its sole stoplight at U.S. 1. Stafford’s 40,000 residents (129,000 now) had no drug store within the county and only one high school. It would be three long years before Ronald Reagan became our nation’s leader.
My first opinion column on this page appeared in March 1997, and you have tolerated me, most of the time, ever since. Thanks kindly. An early concern of mine was that I would eventually run out of ideas to write about.
...Not yet.
posted by Ben Blankenship at
10:40 AM
