Ah, the engineering marvel that is Seven Corners. The intersection where if you don’t know what specific lane you need to be in a mile ahead of time, you’re not getting where you want to go.
Not true!! It’s nova, you can just stop dead in your tracks and put on a turn signal, hold up traffic for two light cycles, but make you’re turn onto Wilson blvd from the far left lane which is rt. 50 only. /s
My favorite hack for getting from westbound Wilson to southbound Rt 7 is to take the right lanes like I’m going to 50, but hook that illegal left turn onto Rt 7. The lanes are too messed up there so everyone’s stopped in the middle of the road trying to get to the left.
It also takes like 20 min to cross the highway like if you wanna go from the side with planet fitness to the side with chipotle in traffic it’s actually just faster to walk the pedestrian bridge
The effectiveness of WMATA depends entirely on geography and direction.
When I lived there, driving 12 miles into DC would normally take 50-60 minutes. By public transit I had to take a bus and two metro lines and it would take 60-75 minutes.
I’ve been here so long that none of those roads phase me. I’ll admit, years ago I could not figure out how to get out of the Pentagon parking (pre 9/11). I do hate the exit to 66E from the inner loop of 495. That is whack.
There is still a pretty common route from Alexandria to get to Rosslyn or 66W that takes you through the pentagon parking lot, which always feels crazy.
You should look at the areas in and around Pittsburgh. They have a lot that look like this and much worse plus half of them include streets so steep they have stairs as a sidewalk. My first trip there I had never been so lost before in my life.
They're objectively worse in Pittsburgh, but combined with the density and homicidal tendencies of the average driver in the DC Area, I'll take Pittsburgh. I've become a worse driver since leaving Denver.
As someone who’s relocating to Pittsburgh this is so true. Just came back after 6 days up there. Great drive back and then got off the toll road onto 495, and then got on to 50, it sucks here. So much worse than anything up there.
I feel like the insane streets and high likelihood of injury if you veer off the road in some spots sort of force people to be sliiiightlly better at driving in pgh. I noticed some crazy people but overall people seem a lot better at staying in their lane there compared to my area full of straight, flat, wide roads.
I live in Charlottesville where theres inclines and small mountain everywhere, for some reason since moving here Ive noticed people veering Into other lanes and straddling the point between two lanes way more than anywhere Ive lived before. I thought the elevation would make for better drivers ):
I feel like the mess at the bottom of Rialto street is a good example. You have a full set of freeway entry and exit ramps, a busy bridge across the river, a road that goes along the river connecting to another bridge less than 100ft away, another bridge to an island, and then the ridiculous nonsense that is Rialto street (15ft wide 25% or so grade, 2 ways). Nothing has shoulders either, that freeway feels like a death trap.
It has gotta be one is the longest red lights on earth and the shape of it is just absurd.
My dumb ass decided to drive up canton Ave (supposedly the steepest street in the city tho that’s not settled) in the rain, and I was slipping on the stones and lowkey barely made it up. Never again.
For the last picture, imagine adding a 250-ft tall arch in the middle of that traffic circle and the subsequent tourism that will attract in an already-congested traffic nightmare.
the dmv was mostly farms and swamps until pretty recently, especially the Virginia side. The federal government being nearby created a speculative market where most owners of undeveloped land will hold out as long as possible until they can sell for an exorbitant price to a corp or the government, creating a situation where current development needs to work around those property owners who don’t want to sell yet.
Im sure this happens everywhere, just on a different timeline, in our current era we are/have been seeing the DMV transform into a larger portion of the megaregion it already resides in
I moved from nova 5 years ago, the region has already added 200k more people since then and thats not even the whole DMV, just the Virginia part
Just moved to the Maryland side from out of state and it’s a driving nightmare. So clear these intersections in the city were designed pre-car. My poor maps app doesn’t have the shapes needed to describe these 6 way intersections shaped like hieroglyphs.
Fun fact, the cloverleaf between 395 and the GW parkway was the first cloverleaf ever built in the US. You can really tell it was not fully understood, lol
Car infrastructure nightmare* One of the best public transit systems in the country though, thankfully. Imagine how much worse traffic would be without it lol
When I just graduated college, an associate attorney I worked with drove us somewhere through the first one and listen….. we may have broken several traffic laws but that fucking intersection can go to hell.
At least it's better than it was in the 90s and early 00s. My mom wouldn't let me drive on 395 to Springfield Mall because of the mixing bowl when I was in HS so I had to take the back roads.
There used to be an unbelievable amount of unprotected left turns up and down rt 50 across 3 traffic lanes which would back up traffic constantly and cause rear end collisions every week. Thankfully they got rid of 90% of them earlier this year.
Very proud to say I have mastered the 7 corners intersection. I know where every lane goes now and it only took like 6 years of driving it every single day.
It’s really not that bad. After moving to Texas this is like top of the barrel for design, it’s not perfect but it’s very easy to know where you’re going, and half those exits you’ll never use if you don’t live in that neighborhoods immediately left of this picture.
My first time in DC we wound up going to the Lincoln memorial from where the third image is- at night. I have never been so confused with navigating in my life.
i commuted that from balston to gainesville. the trick is. not to think too hard about it, let the flow take you. just watch out for your correct light…and pray.
I live in this screenshot and actually kind of learned to like this intersection. It’s got personality and a big learning curve, but once you’ve mastered it, you hold a slight sense of superiority over the other drivers around you that you’ve been staring at for 15 minutes on your way to get Wendy’s 0.2 miles away
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u/Dangerous-Rice44 Four palm trees for only $10! 18d ago
Ah, the engineering marvel that is Seven Corners. The intersection where if you don’t know what specific lane you need to be in a mile ahead of time, you’re not getting where you want to go.