Forget Dulles, what about us?

You may remember Feb. 12. That was the day the ice hit and the traffic stopped. After six hours of commuting (and I have heard that some folks had even longer commutes), the only thing I wanted to do was get out of the car. But as I prepared to turn off the ignition and roll out of the driver’s seat, I heard the news report that just got me mad. The announcer said “Rail to Dulles might not be dead just yet.” I’m thinking to myself, “who cares!”

Most likely many of you reading this article got the unpleasant experience of sharing in that Feb. 12. Being stuck in a car is never a fun thing but it gives you time to ponder life and work out all of its problems over the course of your time sentenced to being trapped sitting in a seat.

For the folks I was riding with, the life pondering and problem solving focused on fixing traffic and who was to blame for the mess everyone was in.

We started out with the usual blaming VDOT for the mess. But really that was more frustration than blame. Weather is a hard thing to predict and knowing the precise moment to put salt on the roads has got to be challenging at best for VDOT so, they were off the hook.

Next we blamed each other, or at least I blamed myself, for not leaving earlier. I knew something was coming in regards to the weather; I just didn’t know what that “something” was and when and how much of “something” was going to accumulate. Hind sight is 20/20 however, so the only thing I could say about that is, I won’t wait till the end of the day again.

But finally the conversation led to an “aha” moment. Someone said that we need metro down Interstate 95 past Springfield more than we need rail to Dulles. It was the one thing we all could agree upon. So for an extended portion of the conversation we imagined what life would be like with some type of mass transit, a ferry, metro rail or something, that could get us from home to work and back in a respectable amount of time, which at that point would be anything less than two hours.

But as much as I like to dream, our state public officials might want to consider what needs to happen to make this a reality, if for no other reason than just to have a clearer picture of what it would cost and the amount of time it would take to bring new options to our area.

For at least a year, I have heard public officials, like Governor Timothy M. Kaine, contemplating whether rail to Dulles should go underground, above ground, how far it should extend and how great the whole thing would be for Northern Virginia’s economy. Chances are the governor might be right. Businesses are going out towards Dulles and road access is really the only outlet.

But while he and others are feverishly trying to save rail to Dulles and thinking about what’s best for the economy, let’s not forget what’s best for the quality of life for tens of thousands of residence down the I-95 corridor.

The only options along the I-95 corridor are HOV lanes, which, by the way, some public officials want to turn into High Occupancy Toll lanes, aka HOT lanes. Imagine, if you will, a commute where the ice hits and people start paying a toll that increases as the volume on the HOV/HOT lanes increases. So far, that is the best lawmakers have come up with as an idea for trying to fix traffic down I-95. On a day like Feb.12, that idea makes as much sense as shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic.

I am a little biased, I must admit, after the six hour nightmare of crawling traffic, but HOT won’t solve our long term growing traffic issues from Fairfax, down through Prince William, Stafford and places beyond.

To make my point, consider the massive amount of growth down the I-95 corridor. When I moved here 12 years ago, the Horner Road lot was a mere shadow of what it is now. Since then the Horner lot has tripled, slug parking has filled up a middle section of Potomac Mills and commuter lots are sprinkled throughout Prince William County, Stafford County and who knows where else.

Hopefully as we move into the gubernatorial and statewide races of 2009, maybe someone will address the problem of traffic options down our way.

Davon Gray works as a lobbyist in Washington, D.C., and resides in Woodbridge. E-mail him at {encode="dgpointofview@comcast.net" title="dgpointofview@comcast.net"}.