I live in Rockville and work in Springfield, and leaving at 5pm Friday to trek back across the Legion Bridge to 270 is a breeze. Leave anytime before then and I'm stuck in regular bumper to bumper all the way up.

Heading west into VA from DC is no problem in the afternoons on I-66 b/c it's HOV. It's a breeze and usually flows at 60 mph. UNTIL... the Beltway. If you want to go any further west, you crawl. At least on M-Th. I don;t know about Fridays. because I gave up on weekend trips a few years ago once we had kids. Sure, the mountains are close, the beach isn;t that far away, etc... But try getting there for a weekend trip, and I'm burned out. We take our breaks in our back yard.

I think Metro should have a distinctive ring tone for each station on a line. That way you could doze and listen for the ring tone.

Missed today's chat, but:

Coming from Montgomery county to Georgetown I prefer the Circulator (Farragut North) over the Georgetown Connector (Dupont Circle) because:

A) Circulator appears to be more frequent service at Farragut North.

B) Circulator takes SmartTrip.

C) Because it takes SmartTrip, you don't need to remember to get your transer pass from your boarding station.

What another poster said is wrong, a transfer does NOT make the georgetown connection free (though it does make it cheaper).

it did seem like saturday was pretty bad. I don't know if that's usual now, or a one-time thing.

123 from occoquan to fairfax city was pretty bad. 95 north from potomac mills to springfield was bad. 267 was pretty heavy too, in both directions.

I was on I-66 EB on Sat. afternoon at 2:30. I took a friend from Centreville to National, and it was smooth sailing all the way from Route 28 to Exit 73, where we got stuck for 20 minutes because of the TR Bridge work.

Just to comment on your chat peeve today in regards to the funeral procession (I couldnt find an email address to send this to you) - this press release was put out last Friday and should have been sent to every major media outlet. It was posted on the FFX Cty Police site Friday morning, giving full times and details of the procession.

http://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/police/reports/Reports%202006/051206processionroute.htm

Does anyone use the traffic cameras on local websites? I've looked a few times, and I guess by the time I get to those intersections (some just 1 mile away), everyone else has left the office and on the road as well. Those cameras always seem to show no traffic on my route, and there is always traffic when I'm driving!

I too got caught in the funeral procession on Saturday. It appears the Fairfax PD shut down at least three major arteries for the event - the toll road, Rt. 28, and I-66. While the death was certainly a tragedy, it was a huge inconvenience to a lot of people. Route 7 was bumper-to-bumper outside the Beltway, as nobody could get past the ramp to the toll road. A few portable billboards on the Beltway announcing the closures would have been nice. Or maybe a radio announcement. Anything would have been better than sitting completely still in highway smog for the afternoon.

Hi, I wanted to take this opportunity to tack on to your 5/15 chat, which I missed. As far as traffic report reliability, I have to recommend XM radio's traffic coverage. While the reports don't always catch every minor delay, they are by far the most comprehensive AND constant feeds of info. on the market. Their MetroRail coverage is not all there yet, but it has improved. Trafficland.com is good to check before leaving work, but as a former commuter of two rush hours (DC and Baltimore), XM is best for folks on-the-fly.

Hi Steve, I missed today's chat too, but someone made a comment I wanted to respond to. You can do with this as you will:

Someone complained that they didn't want Metro to allow food vendors in stations based on the, can we say, lack of cleanliness in America's oldest subway system.

Now, I've been on the T, and I love it. But boy, is it grungy. However, to give a more global perspective, don't judge all systems with food by just that one. The Barcelona Metro is an immaculately clean system, and they have food stalls and bars, among other things, in nearly every station. Cleanliness depends on Metro's janitorial budget and the manners of its riders. Perhaps folks in DC will prove cleaner than their bretheren in Boston.

In any case, I'm all for adding stores and food to the stations.

On Sunday 5/8 we were returning on 66 east bound from I-81. Everything moved very well around 2:30 until we hit the construction area--or should I say Non-construction area near Manassas . The traffic slowed way down to apparently read the lighted signs warning of trucks entering the work zone from the right. There were NO trucks and no work was taking place on Sunday afternoon. These signs were in two places a mile or two apart. Once past the second sign , traffic resumed posted speeds all the way to teh Beltway. The ONLY reason for the slow downs and jams was the electric sign boards warning of nonexsistent trucks. Perhaps someone should suggest to VDOT that could turn the signs off for the weekend.

Metro, Metro, Metro!

I used to live in Woodbridge, but the commute (2 hours each way on a *good* day) was a killer.
Moved to Mont. County, and am happy with the *public transportation* and SIDEWALKS/bikepaths, etc.

Paving over No. Virginia just isn't the answer-- insist on living where you can get there via mass transit!

I have lived all except 6 years of my life in northern virginia and i must say i still haven't any process toward any peace for weekend traffic. I can deal with traffic, morning, night, afternoon, whenever during the day... Except weekends.

For me, i feel as commuters we are on a gentelment's agreement with the traffic god. We say ok traffic god, i understand you must wreck your havoc from 6-10ish and from 11:30-1:30 and again from 3-7ish, but in return spare us misery on the good weekend where we might be able to get to aplace where we *want* to go, not because we *have* to go. Is that really to much to ask... apparently it is.

I couldn't participate in today's chat, but for those taking MARC to Camden Yards from Union Station or Greenelt, there is bus service after each weekday game (MARC doesn't run on weekends) to get you back to your point of origin. It's not as fast as the train, obviously, but beats some of the other alternatives proposed in the chat.

I echo the comment mentioned above about XM's traffic coverage. It's not perfect by any stretch, and I've found that I get the best results by listening to both XM and WTOP.

One benefit of XM is that, as the other poster stated, it is continuous--that is, you don't have to wait for 7:28 (or whenever). You just turn to channel 214 and you'll immediately get either the traffic or the weather.

They're also not constrained by the inevitable time issues that the commercial stations face, so the reports tend to be more comprehensive. They give time estimates for some roads (eg, "55 minutes from Potomac Mills to the Beltway"). Lisa Baden has started doing that for a couple of roads, but not for as many. I find the XM reports to be particularly helpful when I leave the office, since I never seem to leave at the proper time to catch the WTOP reports prior to driving some distance. (Plus, in the afternoon I note that Bob Marbourg does NOT allow listeners to call in with updates like Lisa Baden does. I've never found his reports to be as useful or updated as quickly as hers.)

I like that XM doesn't use DC-area traffic reporter jargon. I've never been certain what they mean when they say "the lanes are open." That doesn't tell me anything. Do you mean the lanes are moving? Do you mean that no lane is blocked by a wreck, but that all lanes may be at a standstill (yet "open" because cars can use them to stand still)? Or are all lanes doing what the traffic reporters down in Raleigh call "stop and roll" (ie, ease off the clutch, roll forward a few meters, press clutch back in and step on brake)?

If you have an Acura RL--I don't--the car's navigation system can integrate with XM's traffic reports to show traffic jams on your navigation screen and then route you around them. Sounds like a neat idea.

But the BEST benefit of XM is that they always mention ALL of the DC area in each report--Virginia, Maryland, and DC. Virginia usually gets discussed first, too (yesssss!) I've found that the commercial stations have traditionally focused on Maryland and given short shrift to Virginia, although WTOP in particular has improved over the last few years. But either way, it's nice to know that the whole report won't be devoted to discussing the latest problem on I-270.

Downsides of XM, and reasons I still listen to WTOP as well:

(1) The XM reports are recorded on a loop, so they are not updated constantly--sometimes it can be 10 or 15 minutes before a new recording plays. (On the other hand, if you miss part of a report, you can catch what you missed only a few minutes later without waiting.) They can't respond to listener phone calls immediately the way WTOP can.

(2) Some of the reporters haven't learned how to read from a computer screen while not making it apparent to the listener that they're reading from a screen. They display a lack of knowledge of the DC area that takes away from their credibility--for example, it's routine for XM reporters to say that I-95 is backed up "from Occoquan River Bridge to the Triangle." Errm, "the Triangle" is a region in North Carolina; the Virginia town is "Triangle" (no "the"). A backup to "the Triangle" would be one massive traffic jam that would warrant national news coverage! I realize that this may seem like a minor issue, but it doesn't inspire confidence in the report if they can't get these sorts of things correct.

(3) The "jam factor" and "jam alerts" are a little bit goofy at first and take some getting used to.

Yes I also hit lots of traffic on Westbound I-66 Saturday between 11:15 and 12:15. My normal weekend/off-peak drive from Downtown DC to Gainesville that takes 35 minutes took over an hour. The vague signage of "Special Event" didn't help matters either. Shouldn't there be an alternate posted instead of a sign basically saying "This is why you're sitting in two or three traffic jams at noon on a Saturday!"

Sorry the tragic death of a police officer is so inconvenient to some of you. For God's sake, the man died protecting us. Get out of your little fantasy bubbles. The man deserved whatever procession his family wanted. The information about the routes was out there. Blame the media for not publicizing it more. I don't know what else you want...a personal visit from someone to tell you there's going to be a delay?

Get a heart...and to the people who posted the same stuff on Steve's chat last week. Sorry your run to Target for towels and curtains was disrupted.