Drive Philly to Richmond

Needing to drive from Philadelphia area to Richmond (Midlothian) on Tuesday morning. Concerned primarily about traffic in the Baltimore / DC area.

Any thoughts on rush hour or current construction delays would be appreciated. Need to be in Richmond by noon Tuesday.

Taking route 301 would allow me to bypass heavier traffic patterns but 95 is more direct. Thoughts?

In future weeks I'll be driving this on Monday morning and returning Thursday night. How bad is weekend beach traffic over the Bay Bridge?

You're going to have to sit in traffic, there's really no way around it. Philly to DC with little/no traffic is about 2:15. My house in Arlington to downtown Richmond with little/no traffic is about 1:10. So you're looking at 3:30 or so in a best-case scenario.

You're gonna get stuck on 295/95 between DC and Baltimore, and again on the DC beltway trying to get around town and back to 95 south. Once you're on 95 south, south of the beltway, you'll be OK. Depending on how important it is, and assuming you can't leave the night before, I'd give yourself at least an extra 90 minutes due to the traffic, which would mean 5-6 hours for the drive, maybe more.

Good luck.

If you value your sanity, you will fly. US has 9 non-stops/day PHL-RIC. Nothing fancy, but there is no good way to do this drive, particularly anywhere close to when you propose to do it. The summer is worse.

Thanks. That's what I figured. Only time I've done it previously was leaving Philadelphia after dinner and driving late at night. Unfortunately that wasn't an option tonight.

Doing the project manager a favor due to a tight budget and short notice for this first go. I agreed to "try" it once as tickets are running over $600 RT. May try route 301 down to Bay Bridge tomorrow since there won't be the beach traffic.

2:15 AM for little/no traffic? Yeah sounds about right. (LOL. Kidding - know you meant elapsed time). Thanks

I am all about teamwork and appreciate people willing to take a bit of a hit, but these guys are adding 12-14 hours of high stress work to your week. There ought to be a middle ground. Perhaps you do a OW rental and fly OW?

Yeah intending to discuss on this week during the project planning. She'll be okay once I explain from a perspective of lost billable hours. Travel is actually longer if I drive, more stressful, and can't be dual purposed. Think she just did a quick mapquest check and said 200 - 250 miles ... driving is a flexible option. Also the original project plan had me there one week a month and now it has risen to the next 3 of 4.

Kind felt obligated to give it a try after she told the client I was driving as it was only 4 hours same as flying. After Tuesday I'll be able to say, with evidence, with traffic much longer.

Hasn't helped my mood that it took 90 minutes to get a rental car from Enterprise. (Very busy, new staff, waiting on a car, etc). Negated any time savings versus driving to airport for National.

And the predicted storms this week will only make travel worse.

Amtrak

Train 67, departs PHL at 4:40am arrives in RVM at 10:10am only $94

and you can sleep, work, read, etc. on the train.

That train is not exactly the lap of luxury and 4:04 AM is not exactly what I call an unstressful work week.

If you guys bill hours and you make more than minimum wage, the airfare will easily work out.

66/67 does have the "real" regional business class, with 2x1 seats and the diner right behind.

That's 5 and a half hours on a train - it's only a little over 2 hours from Philly to D.C. on the NE Regional so you'll be in D.C. at like 7 am. So where does the time go? Oh yeah you end up sitting for ages in D.C. and won't be in Alexandria before close to 8 and then you're stopping in every small town. That would get real old real fast especially if you left the house at 4 in the morning.

I hope the OP comes back and tells us what he ended up doing each way...and what his future plans are.

I may be doing this same trek.

Tuesday morning it took 6:15 to get to Richmond taking I-95. Thought by leaving at 5 am I'd miss most of the worst traffic but still hit congestion north of Baltimore. On the way back I left Richmond after 6 pm and it took 5:20 hours. And that did not include pick up / drop off of rental car.

Will be flying in the future. It takes less time and is less stressful.

Thanks for the reminder to stand my ground.

We did work it out. They thought they were offering me flexibility, and of course forgot travel hours were fighting traffic (especially Sunday night/Monday mornings in summer). One of those times where I had to quietly stand firm regarding what is important to me to make life on the road manageable.