| Parkway
Problem is in the Design |
|
To the editor:
|
| Reading the lead article concerning the Fairfax County Parkway
and the comments by Tom Grein in the Sept. 27 edition of The
Observer reminded me of an old George Carlin silly question:
"Why do we park in the driveway and drive on the parkway?"
|
| Well folks, we don't, we park on our beloved parkway. |
| The senseless deaths and accidents on the road are frightening
and the aggressive driving that I've witnessed needs to be
stopped. The enforcement policies discussed should go a long
way toward those ends. |
| However, I think that county officials are overlooking a
serious and fundamental flaw §the very design and implementation
of the road. One would think that the purpose of the Parkway
would be to move traffic in an orderly and efficient manner.
Instead what we have is a road that appears to be the test
for every imaginable interchange that could be thought of
and designed by people calling themselves traffic engineers.
|
| The Route 50-Parkway interchange is a perfect example. We
first had an ordinary intersection of the two roads controlled
by traffic lights. A construction program was launched to
improve that. |
| Our hopes were quickly dashed when after spending millions
of dollars to build an overpass the designers installed traffic
lights to allow traffic (west to south, east to north) access
to the Parkway. So, instead of an efficient, limited access
road we have a hodge podge of never-ending delays. Gee, why
do we have road rage and aggressive drivers? |
| One solution that seems to get a lot of lip service and
never gets implemented is to manage myriad traffic lights
so as to provide a continuous flow of traffic instead of unending
stop-and-go. This isn't all that hard. Computer software has
been available for a long time that enables mathematicians
and engineers to model traffic flows and to determine the
best timing for traffic lights. |
| Turn the problem over to one of the professors at George
Mason University, fund a six-month study, and I think we'd
all be pleasantly surprised at the result. |
| Gerry Mueller |
| Reston |
