You want to get out of town, but first you have to catch your flight. Be warned: Driving to each of the Washington region’s airports takes longer than it did eight years ago, thanks to everyone’s favorite passenger: road congestion. A study by the National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board examined travel times from more than 15 residential or business hubs in the area to each of the region’s major airports: Washington Dulles International, Ronald Reagan Washington National and Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall. Highway travel times during peak times on weekdays increased since 2003 in most cases.
For instance, a trip from Greenbelt to BWI rose from 26.6 minutes in 2003 to 31.2 minutes in 2011. Living around Tysons Corner in Northern Virginia? The travel time to Reagan increased from 24.8 minutes to 44.3 minutes.
The metropolitan planning organization said congestion is likely to increase by 38 percent, in terms of congested lane-miles, between 2010 and 2040. Those increases could be more than 100 percent in outer suburban areas, the agency added.
The lesson here? If you’ve got a flight to make, allow plenty more time to get to the airport than you did a decade ago — and not just for your security pat-down.
The Maryland Transportation Authority is also warning drivers to avoid Interstate 895 and the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel this summer, saying that work to preserve the tunnel
will cause major delays and congestion. Drivers are being told to take Fort McHenry Tunnel on I-95 or the Key Bridge on I-695 instead.
“If you drive I-895, expect major delays, especially during rush hours, potentially as much as 60 minutes per trip,” said Harold Bartlett, executive secretary of the transportation authority. – Lisa Gartner
