What's the deal with the Clermont Street underpass?

In Alexandria, there are signs on Franconia directing you down Clermont street "to Eisenhower Av". After following the trail of bread crumbs down increasingly narrow and twisty roads, you find the only underpass below I95 between MD and the Springfield interchange -- and it's blocked off.

No explaination.

That's the only path past I95 that doesn't get mired up with the interchanges -- most of which are already overly mired with additional traffic mixes.

It almost seems like Alexandria has gone out of its way to create massive gridlock zones at all the I95 interchanges, causing any traffic jam on I95 (such as the Wilson bridge every day) to translate to immobility throughout Alexandria.

Anyone heard why that one and only underpass was closed?

Structural problems? Complaints from the Clermont street condos? Isolating all traffic off Eisenhower Av?

I think the Alexandria city planners need a trip to NYC to see how traffic flow is supposed to work.

And, while they're away, we can change the locks on their office doors.


I'm also thinking of putting my Fairfax Co street map on e/bay: it must be rare, judging from traffic. This must be "Never Never Land" -- the roads are full of "Lost Boys".

 

Correction: There is 495/I95 access from Clermont street -- from the Eisenhower side. So even if the road did go through, it would be combined with the I95 gridlock backflow. On that side, the wall is accompanied by a maze of switchback stairs going apparently nowhere at all.

Our tax dollars at work and play.

What really bothers me is that they aren't content with a single jammed intersection. Telegraph road interchange combines I95 access with the Duke street ramps, a ramp to (I can't figure out from the map where it goes), and two traffic lights a block apart -- something you find way too often in Alexandria. Last week, it took me two hours to get from Duke St. to Franconia.

And these traffic lights are all way, way longer than they should be. Heck, in my day that was a high school math problem: For more traffic, you need a shorter cycle on the light to keep traffic flowing. These lights are red long enough to collect half the county. Don't they know even that much?

Maybe the city planners commute on bikes. They certainly seem to have laid out these roads to mess up traffic.

 

Geez! Don't say "snow". I've seen what traffic gets like when it rains. If it snows, here, the traffic will be a scene from "Inferno".