matthearn.com

I spent most of last week driving to and from King of Prussia, PA (hence the lack of posts), and here is what I can report to you: I-476 and I-76 are the worst system of roads of any place I’ve been to, and include both Staten Island and Boston in that statement. Pretty much everyone in southeast Pennsylvania, totalling several million people, uses one or both of those roads EVERY DAY, and yet they have only two lanes of traffic in each direction. It’s worth noting that this is the same number of lanes that route 87 has through Mason County, Texas, which has, as of the 2000 census, 3738 people in it. Even at 10am the traffic is stop-and-go. I find this infuriating.

I talked it over with my pops, and he says that The Blue Route (I-476) took so long to be built that, while it was completed in 1991, the original planning for it took place in the mid-50s, when much fewer people lived along it. And from the Wikipedia article on the subject:

As one of the most controversial Interstate Highways in Pennsylvania, construction of I-476 began in 1967, but was not completed until 1991 between MacDade Blvd.(Exit 1) and Interstate 76(Exit 16), and until 1992 between Germantown Pike east/Chemical Rd.(Exit 19) and Interstate 276 (PA Turnpike), due to litigation between the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation and several communities in the road’s path over environmental concerns. An agreement in 1985 led to many environmental compromises in the road’s design, including a downsized four-lane design south of Pennsylvania Route 3, ramp meters, and federal scenic route status, prohibiting the erection of advertisement billboards along the entire freeway portion. While the redesigned highway was largely well-received, the constriction to four lanes has led to bottleneck conditions in the area, and many communities that originally opposed the road have now called for its widening.

The people in those communities should simply be set afire.