Evening commute thru brandywine has become a disaster. Red light timing to blame

[pbotz]

I commute thru brandywine on 301/branch ave south in the evenings about 5pm. Over the last 2 or 3 weeks it has become a total horror show. It was never good but now its hit an all time low. I've seen traffic backed up from the red light by the target plaza 3 or 4 miles back. I noticed this change about late October. The time change did not come in yet or sunset/any other issues to cause this. I've determined the light timing has changed creating the mess. You basically creep along till you pass the 2 lights for the target shopping plaza. The 1st light goes green and as you proceed you hit the next light red so you get no where. Once you pass this your moving better and its not a 2 mph crawl. Anyone who travels thru there, i would say pay observation to this and you will see this is why its jammed up daily now.
I went on the sha site and promote others to do so and put a request in to evaluate the light timing. If enough people do so maybe it will be evaluated. I dont believe there should be priority given to traffic leaving the shopping plaza causing the 2 main highways to jam up for miles.
link below. thanks

http://marylandsha.force.com/customercare/request_for_service

 

[BernieP]

Welcome to 2001. With all the road construction you would think it would have gotten better, but then they added more lights on 301/5 before the split. There isn't a good day or time to go through there. It's just as bad if not worse on the weekends.

 

[glhs837]

Ever see that math that goes into timing lights? Pretty crazy stuff since you are modeling flow based on uncertain creature, us humans. Here; do some time with this before talking to traffic engineers.

http://www.signaltiming.com/The_Signal_Timing_Manual_08082008.pdf

with such hits as

One may use a Poisson distribution to estimate 95th-percentile queue from the average queue. In practice, the 95th-percentile queue is approximately 1.6 times the average queue for high-volume movements to approximately 2.0 times the average queue for low-volume movements. The following practical and simplifying approximation is useful in many cases for the purposes of signal timing, recognizing that it is overly conservative in some cases: Queue th Queueavg 95 2 ⋅≈

 

[Gilligan]

I feel for anyone that has to commute that route. Can't see how it could ever get better....only progressively worse. I remember the 70s..when a 10 car backup at the 5/301 intersection in Wadlorf was a traffic jam...

 

[pbotz]

Welcome to 2001. With all the road construction you would think it would have gotten better, but then they added more lights on 301/5 before the split. There isn't a good day or time to go through there. It's just as bad if not worse on the weekends.

I would agree with you there. I have been commuting that way over 10 yrs. It is always a mess however the last 2 or more weeks its been amplified. I would say 20 plus minutes more to navigate from about The plant nursery on branch ave to past the target lights. Once the bypass was done and people became used to it, i would get to maybe the 301/5 merge before it clustered up. Now it starts about 1 mile or more past that.

 

[vince77]

all they've done is move Malfunction Junction a few miles further down Route 5.

 

[nutz]

I would agree with you there. I have been commuting that way over 10 yrs. It is always a mess however the last 2 or more weeks its been amplified. I would say 20 plus minutes more to navigate from about The plant nursery on branch ave to past the target lights. Once the bypass was done and people became used to it, i would get to maybe the 301/5 merge before it clustered up. Now it starts about 1 mile or more past that.

Shopping season is upon us, any chance the PG county economic commission (or whatever) has enough pull to influence a light change?

 

[nutz]

I feel for anyone that has to commute that route. Can't see how it could ever get better....only progressively worse. I remember the 70s..when a 10 car backup at the 5/301 intersection in Wadlorf was a traffic jam...

Wasnt there only a handful (or less) of lights between Point Lookout and Waldorf on 5 and 235?

 

[Kyle]

..when a 10 car backup at the 5/301 intersection in Waldorf was a traffic jam...

In the 80s and 90s I used to take Aquasco and Croom Roads to avoid those potential headaches.

 

[Gilligan]

Wasnt there only a handful (or less) of lights between Point Lookout and Waldorf on 5 and 235?

Yep..lights were scarce.

 

[nutz]

Yep..lights were scarce.

According to some old timers I know “As were police officers. Almost any 1/4 mile straight stretch of road may be turned into a pink slip exchange area on very short notice.” Of course, that was when most people owned their car.

 

[Clem72]

I feel for anyone that has to commute that route. Can't see how it could ever get better....only progressively worse. I remember the 70s..when a 10 car backup at the 5/301 intersection in Wadlorf was a traffic jam...

They could build some damn overpasses like every other large metropolitan area in the country. This is self-inflicted misery, and I don't for the life of me know why.

 

[pbotz]

It seems by the time they plan out and build the poor improvements they decide on, it lasts a few months before its a mess again. 2 red lights were removed in Brandywine and it still is a crawl going thru there. It just backs up from the next red light you would have hit. The last 2 days traffic has been a bit on the lighter side going thru there, for unknown reasons.

 

[black dog]

I feel for anyone that has to commute that route. Can't see how it could ever get better....only progressively worse. I remember the 70s..when a 10 car backup at the 5/301 intersection in Wadlorf was a traffic jam...

Yep, I remember rush hour on the Bethesda side of the beltway split around to Georgia Ave didn't start until 5:10pm and it lasted about 25 min...

 

[Gilligan]

Yep, I remember rush hour on the Bethesda side of the beltway split around to Georgia Ave didn't start until 5:10pm and it lasted about 25 min...

..and I remember when they opened 270.... about a month or so later we drove over from Gaithersburg (where our main feed mill was) just to take a look at it. I remember how in awe I was of this huge new highway that had no cars on it....practically none. Just a big massive empty highway. When they extended Route 70 and cut off all of our at-grade crossings...same thing. Big empty highway that few drove on. Of course Frederick was just an old run-down town with a couple implement dealers and the machine shop we used. Surrounded by farms.

 

[Toxick]

What bakes my ****ing noodle is how bad it's gotten SINCE they put in that overpass and got rid of that double-red-light abortion at the Brandywine Accokeek area.

How can they get rid of TWO (2) red lights, and then the traffic gets.... worse.


I hate that area. I hate all the people driving in that area. I hate every engineer that's had a say in defining that area. I hate every construction worker that's ever carried a shovel or driven a steam roller in that area. I hate everything in and around that area with a seething bitter passion. They should nuke that ****ing place and start over.

What a pit.

 

[Kyle]

What bakes my ****ing noodle is how bad it's gotten SINCE they put in that overpass and got rid of that double-red-light abortion at the Brandywine Accokeek area.

How can they get rid of TWO (2) red lights, and then the traffic gets.... worse.

Probably brought to you by the same group responsible for the I-95/395 Mixing-Bowl.

 

[LightRoasted]

If I may ...

History is repeating itself right in Prince Frederick. The County's, "Planners", and commissioners, are doing everything they can to ensure, and create, a traffic mess that will need to be, in the future, researched, studied, investigated, hold public hearings, communicate with the State, and the SHA engineers, to alleviate the traffic congestion and jamming that, already is, and will increasingly occur to guarantee their job protection.

In addition. WTF is up with the State's new road resurfacing scheme on Rt 4 in the Lusby area? And on HG Truman (Rt 765)? Once where there was nice smooth road, now even brand new tires create so much road noise that one would even hear it while driving a Rolls Royce Phantom rocking to Metallica utilizing the Phantom's Lexicon Logic-7 audio system that comes with 9 amplifiers, 13 speakers and a pair of subwoofers mounted in the floor. Really? WT actual F? And what was even done on HG Truman, whatever low bidder crew that did that work, didn't even smooth out and repair roughed up, worn, ribbed, bumpy, and near pothole areas of the road. Just plopped some slop slurry and laid pea stone on it. What an effing mess.

 

[black dog]

..and I remember when they opened 270.... about a month or so later we drove over from Gaithersburg (where our main feed mill was) just to take a look at it. I remember how in awe I was of this huge new highway that had no cars on it....practically none. Just a big massive empty highway. When they extended Route 70 and cut off all of our at-grade crossings...same thing. Big empty highway that few drove on. Of course Frederick was just an old run-down town with a couple implement dealers and the machine shop we used. Surrounded by farms.

I don't remember when it was opened but I remember driving to the family farrm using 355 up to Frederick and then to Walkersville as a kid.
It's been 7-8 years since I've been there, the last farm left on the new daysville Rd was the Crums, ours was the next farm located in Lehigh's big hole. A valley full of dairy farms gone....

 

[pbotz]

What bakes my ****ing noodle is how bad it's gotten SINCE they put in that overpass and got rid of that double-red-light abortion at the Brandywine Accokeek area.

How can they get rid of TWO (2) red lights, and then the traffic gets.... worse.


I hate that area. I hate all the people driving in that area. I hate every engineer that's had a say in defining that area. I hate every construction worker that's ever carried a shovel or driven a steam roller in that area. I hate everything in and around that area with a seething bitter passion. They should nuke that ****ing place and start over.

What a pit.

love your response.
I feel exactly the same. Ive hit that mess some days at 5pm and its backed up 4 miles out from the red lights near chick filet.
It has been better over the last 2 or so days, for unknown reasons. Its pot luck how crappy and jammed up that area will be usually.