So much for a lazy summer.
Widespread road construction, vicious storms and record temperatures have combined to make August 2010 one of the most hectic ever for Washington-area drivers.
And this weekend isn’t shaping up to be much better.
Construction on Interstate 66 between Nutley Street and the Capital Beltway, road patching on eastbound Route 50 in Maryland, and ongoing construction projects promise to tie up traffic for weekend drivers.
“It’s almost a perfect storm conspiring against mobility in our region,” said Lon Anderson, a spokesman for AAA Mid-Atlantic auto club. “Whether it’s Mother Nature or construction, you name it, and we’ve had to face it this summer.”
Anderson said 10 to 15 percent of Washingtonians are typically gone on vacation during the summer, which, coupled with the absence of rush hour school traffic, usually means a more relaxed commute for area drivers.
Not this year.
Anderson said construction on Interstates 95 and 66, along with other projects, had outpaced area roadwork in previous years. State highway officials agreed.
“This is up there with some of the worst summers we’ve had for construction,” said Joan Morris, a spokeswoman for the Virginia Department of Transportation.
Morris pointed out that traffic had improved this summer for some area drivers, specifically those fortunate Prince William County commuters enjoying wider lanes on I-66.
But, she said, for most drivers the traffic situation was difficult, and improvements to I-66 and I-95 would continue through 2011.
Hellacious summer storms have ripped through the area during August’s morning or evening rush periods several times, compounding construction backups and forcing rescue crews to bail out drivers trapped in their vehicles by flash flooding.
And when it’s not raining, record summer temperatures have necessitated emergency roadwork — and more traffic headaches — on local highways.
Chuck Gischlar, a spokesman for the Maryland State Highway Administration, said his agency had to quickly pull together a $400,000 project to patch roughly 30 sections of Route 50.
“The heat, along with the rain and the 210,000 vehicles per day on average that we have going along that way, has exacerbated the deterioration of the road,” he said.
Gischlar said he recognized that drivers use Route 50 to reach the Bay Bridge and the mid-Atlantic beaches, and so the timing of the repairs was less than ideal.
But he said the concrete patches needed temperatures to stay above 50 degrees to harden, and so the work has to be performed before fall begins.
