"Claim expertise on."
Yep, reading comprehension problems. Nowhere did I claim expertise. Only a slate of knowledge stretching back neary 13 years.
Yeah, working in the AREA, Chris.
I worked in the AREA of your office, to. I occasionally got down your way trying to find a back road to escape route 7, but I certainly didn't get that way every day.
To understand it, you actually have to travel it.
Given that your office is on 123, and you head for what, 495, most days, how often have you actually driven Route 7 WEST of 123, heading east.
As I said, I did every day for nearly 7 years, and traffic gets markedly worse along the whole Route 7 corridor the closer we get to the holidays. I'm not just imagining it, either. It's been written up in the Times, the Post, and a number of local newspapers over the years.
"Traffic's just as bad around it as it is around the Tyson's one..."
You are definitely smoking something. Traffic around the Town Commons is heavy, but it's not nearly as bad as the Route 7 corridor.
You can actually get onto Monument, West Ox, and 50 in a timely fashion. With the shops, car dealerships, service road along side Route 7, and multiway traffic on both the service road and 7, you can find yourself locked in a no-win situation for an amazing amount of time. In that area there are also no viable alternate routes. There's Gosnell, but that's often backed up solid from 7 all the way up to 123. You can swing up Westpark or Tyco, but that doesn't do you a lot of good as they both feed into International, which takes you either back to Route 7, or to the aforementioned 123.
Last year, because of a bad accident on 495 and a thunderstorm, the whole Tysons area was a freakshow. In order to get home I had to head west on 7 to Lewinsville, head towards McLean, swing down Idylwood, and cut through to Cedar. All to avoid Route 7.
Route 7 is a corridor. If you look at a map, you'll see that until you get inside 123 and down towards 495, you have hardly any cross routes. That's why the area is such an incredible bitch. The mall, 66, and the Dulles Toll Road have destroyed most of the cross routes that used to exist. With them gone, once you're in the funnel, you're toast.
And, given that since the early 1990s nearly 50,000 new houses have gone in along the Route 7 corridor... You do the math.
Around Christmas time, if there's even a hint of snow, or a drop of rain, it can take an hour to go from the Tower to 123, a monumental drive of less than 1.5 miles...
So did you get me my CD or not?
I'm trade you. Cubanel (no Jalapenos, sorry) corn bread and Cider Spice Cake for it.
