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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!princeton!tilt!chenr
From: chenr@tilt.FUN (The 1200 baud hacker)
Newsgroups: net.flame
Subject: Re: the on-ramp Grand-Prix
Message-ID: <177@tilt.FUN>
Date: Wed, 10-Oct-84 18:33:08 EDT
Article-I.D.: tilt.177
Posted: Wed Oct 10 18:33:08 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 11-Oct-84 07:24:16 EDT
Organization: Princeton Univ. EECS
Lines: 45


>HUMOR TIME:  The funniest piece of road is I-95 as it approaches
>Route 495 north of Washington.  495 (the Capital Beltway) is
>a circular road around D.C.

ARRGGGGHHHH.  Humor?  The man wants humor, eh?  Well, Ron, how
about I-495 around the Cabin John Bridge?

For those of you lucky enough not to have seen this thing, it's a bridge
over the Potomac River connecting the Maryland and Virginia sections 
of I-495.  What makes driving on this thing such a fun time is the
a**hole designer who f*cked up 495 throughout that entire area.
495 is a 4-lane highway, count'em, 4 lanes, on both sides of the
bridge.  The bridge is 3 lanes wide.  We won't mention the two-lane
highway that merges into one lane that merges into 495 just before
the bridge on the Virginia side.  We also won't mention the on and
off-ramps ON THE BRIDGE ITSELF.  Oh, and I did I forget to mention
the fact that it's the only major bridge in that area?  The next
crossing point north of the bridge is a ferry 40 miles away.  The
next bridge south is this little one-lane laugh of a bridge, called,
appropriately enough, Chain Bridge.  If you don't want that one, your
only choice is to go into D.C.  If the Russians want to ruin the
economy of the D.C. metropolitan are, all they have to do is blow
that bridge.  BOOM!!  Instant recession.  Half of South-western
MD commutes into Northern VA and vica-versa.

Of course, what makes driving on that bridge real fun besides the
hundreds of cars merging together as 6 lanes (on the Virginia side,
4 on the MD side) become 3, the people trying to get onto the bridge
from one of the on-ramps, and the people pretending to be Mario
Andretti, is having to deal with all the steel plates, potholes,
and holes.  Don't laugh, one afternoon, a 5 x 5 foot section dropped
out of the middle of the bridge.

The moronic twit who's responsible for all this is also responsible for
the "8 million ways to get to I-270", but we won't talk about that...

495, the worlds slowest road to nowhere...

-- 

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