Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Rocking My Commute

I have a 23-mile commute (46mi round-trip) everyday, primarily along the Washington DC Beltway (I-495). If you picture the Beltway as a clock, I travel from the six-o'clock (Exit 1) to 9-o'clock (Exit 10) points and back. After I dropped off Dash at daycare today, I checked the Google Maps App on my iPhone (LOVE this app! It's the reason Monkeyrotica gifted me the iPhone in the first place) and saw the Interstate was colored red (very slow traffic) right around my exit. As I approached my exit, I could see that traffic was NOT moving at all, and the ramp to the non-local exits was full of cars. I took the local route.

Here's a screengrab of what 495 looked like this morning, with my route in pink. See the red-and-black segments across the bridge in Maryland? That means traffic is stopped, not moving, you're SOL. I never got on 495, as my ramp continues as a ramp for the next exit, Telegraph Road—I took it and followed Eisenhower Avenue, which is a frontage to the Beltway for about four miles.

The next exit to merge with the Beltway is Van Dorn, and Eisenhower Ave conveniently ends right there. I ramped onto 495 at a point where there's usually heavy volumes of merging cars and there was NOTHING—only about three or four cars, including me. The rest of my commute, which typically takes 30-45 minutes? I sped through in 15. All the cars that were normally clogging the roads were stuck in Maryland or Occoquan, VA.

Woot! It's rarely this easy to navigate a bad snag. Anyway, now I'm at work. Have a great Wednesday, everyone!

5 comments:

  1. What a great way to start the day!

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  2. Well that's great, I guess. I do not envy people who have to negotiate a long drive to work and back every day. I'd lose my mind. I'm glad I get to walk.

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  3. Mary Lynn, Yeah, it could have been SO much worse if I hadn't taken that detour.

    XUP, I'm really looking forward to teleworking more often. I had two days a week last year and then work slowed down, eliminating that option. This coming school year, both kids will be in "school-age child-care" from 7–8:30am when a bus will drive them to school. I have a fantasy of the three of us walking to SACC (only 3/4-mile away) every morning, then I'll walk home to start my work day. We'll see if that happens!

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  4. 295 was solid red from the Wilson Bridge to the SE Freeway this morning at 9:30.

    Telegraph Road exit is supposed to be a mess for quite some time. Ramp construction or something narrows everything down to 2 lanes.

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  5. oddly (sadly?) it has never occurred to me to use the traffic feature of google maps - I'm going to go with it hasn't made it out to the wild west yet, it can't be that I'm just an iPhone carrying luddite

    but good for you - it always feels good to beat the system

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