The Pain in the Ass Snowstorm That Should Not Have Been

(a follow-up to my previous Snowbabies entry) 

Thursday’s snowstorm wasn’t a bad storm, not for this area.  What was incredulously atrocious, however, was the TRAFFIC.

My 40-minute commute took nearly 2½ hours.  I was one of the lucky ones.  Many people were stuck in traffic for up to 8 hours, just trying to travel a distance of 15 to 20 miles or so.

Our office closed at 1:30.  I glanced out the window and saw traffic congestion in all directions, the streets still unplowed.  It looked like many businesses were closing down, all at roughly the same time.  I decided to wait and hang out for a while, with the hope that the traffic would eventually clear somewhat.  By 3:30 the scene looked much the same, but I decided to leave anyway, before it got dark.

I walked down the street to my car.  It was still snowing, and I had forgotten my hat at home (left it right on the counter!), but it wasn’t a wet snow, so it wasn’t bad.  I retrieved my Snow Rake from the car and quickly cleaned the car.  I used the Snow Rake to push some of the accumulated snow away from the tires, too.

Aside:  I love my Snow Rake.  It has to be one of the Top 3 Things I Own.  I’ve never seen them in stores, but if you live in snow country, I recommend you find one.  Perhaps at an auto supply store?  Here’s what it looks like:

   

A big block of stiff foam rubber mounted on a 4-foot wood handle.  Pushes the heaviest of snow off your car quickly and easily, with nary a scratch.  Puts those weenie snowbrushes to shame.  My Snow Rake came from my Uncle Bill, who is spending a lot of his retirement helping and hanging out at his friend’s car lot.  Someone came to the lot selling them.  Who says door-to-door salesmen are a thing of the past?

Get a Snow Rake if you can.

End Aside.

I entered traffic approximately 1/8 mile down the street from the office.  It was a parking lot.  Traffic inched along.  Forty minutes later, when I was in front of the office (yes, that’s 1/8 mile in 40 minutes), I noticed a car in the adjacent lane with its hazard lights on.  I don’t know how long she had been there, but eventually some guys from our parking garage pushed her car onto the sidewalk, out of traffic.  She had been stuck in traffic so long that she ran out of gas.  I question how many able-bodied men just inched their cars around hers rather than get out and help her out of traffic.  I hate that ignorant shit.  It wasn’t as if traffic were moving.  No one would have “lost” time by coming to her aid.  AND it would have improved the situation behind her, where two already jammed traffic lanes were forced to merge into one.

The first traffic light wasn’t bad.  The second one, just ahead, was an absolute nightmare.  It’s a much larger, busier intersection.  I had the added challenge of needing to turn left.  I could see gridlock.  More ignorant shit.  Why – why, why, why – if traffic is not moving through an intersection, does one proceed into the intersection when the light is yellow?  You know you can’t make it.  And thus, gridlock is born – out of ignorance.

The light turned yellow as I approached it.  I waited.  And watched.  And I could see that basically no one was paying any regard to the lights.  The situation was completely out of control.  The only way to get through the intersection was to move whenever and wherever you could.  If there were two inches of space in front of your car, regardless of the direction, you had to take it, or someone else would.  I had to go slightly to the right before eventually heading left.  Once I got to the light, it took six or seven changes of the light before I had completely proceeded through the intersection.  Have you ever heard of such a thing?

Office to highway, one-half mile.  Nearly 90 minutes had passed.

90 MINUTES TO DRIVE JUST UNDER ONE-HALF MILE.

I then headed through the sloppy mess to the highway.  Hopefully, the highway would be a littler clearer.  Or perhaps sanded.

Nope.

The negative:  The highway had not been plowed or sanded at all.  Four lanes had become two or three “lanes” of travel.  You had to drive in the tracks of the vehicle ahead of you or you would get stuck.  Changing “lanes” was a risk.

The positive:  I would later learn that of the four directions headed out of Providence, I lucked out.  My direction was the only one that was not a total traffic jam.

I noticed a non-municipal truck in the lane to my left.  He was driving with his plow down.  I got behind him.  Eventually, he changed lanes and brought his plow up.  The lane to the right of me looked a lot better than what I was in, so I crossed over.  Almost.  I had almost made it across the snow that was piled up between the tire track lanes, when one or both of my back wheels got stuck.  Fortunately, there was not much traffic in my direction.  Cars were still able to travel on either side of me, so I wasn’t creating a tie-up.  I didn’t want to do the forward-reverse thing.  I think that only makes the ruts deeper.  With no immediately approaching traffic, I FLOORED it while simultaneously jerking the steering wheel hard to the right and hard to the left.  On the second jerk to the right, I got out.  Yea!  Go punchbuggy!  I was afraid the car was going to stall out after flooring the accelerator as I did, but she just gave one little sputter and continued on her merry way.  Good car, good baby.  She didn’t want to be stuck any more than I did.

I drove in third, sometimes second, gear the entire time on the highway.  The traffic in my direction was light and slow but steady.  I prayed that it wouldn’t come to a standstill at any point, because I wasn’t sure if I could get going again after stopping.

Where were the plows?!

I saw one plow on the opposite side of the highway.  Traffic in that direction was completely tied up for the whole distance I was on it.  The one plow was preceded by a state trooper announcing for traffic to merge right so the plow could get by.  What a joke.  How the hell do you merge when the highway is a parking lot?

In my direction, I saw no plows, though they certainly would have been able to get through.  What I did see, though, was plenty of abandoned cars.

Visibility was becoming bad, not because of the weather, but because ice was accumulating under my wipers.  But I couldn’t pull over on the highway, because I would have gotten stuck in the unplowed, untraveled upon snow.

When I exited the highway, the streets in Citytown, while still messy, were significantly better than those in Providence.  I easily made my way home, arriving at 5:50.  I could tell that even my little street, with but ten houses that leads to nothing but the cove, had been plowed, albeit much earlier than my arrival.  I pulled up in front of the house, went in to get my hat, shoveled the driveway, and pulled in.

Inside, I turned on the news and learned that the overall traffic situation was much worse than what I had seen.  Yet, the snowfall was nothing out of the ordinary.

So what the hell happened?

Cars stuck in traffic for up to eight hours.  Abandoned cars everywhere, some disabled (that one back near the office wasn’t the only one to run out of gas), some abandoned out of sheer frustration when drivers decided it would be better to walk.  Gridlock throughout all of downtown Providence.  Worst of all, Providence school buses with elementary school students on board were out stuck in traffic until as late as 11:00 p.m.

 The State Department of Transportation planned to send more than 100 sand trucks and 200 private contractors onto the roads to clear the snow, but the plows were often blocked by traffic.

Dozens of employers and government agencies allowed workers to leave early, as did about two dozen public school districts.  The resulting exodus snarled traffic across Providence.

“Traffic is at a standstill,” said Providence police Sgt. Paul Zienowicz, who was watching the downtown roadways.  “It’s one big traffic jam.” 

Yup, the Snowbabies fucked it all up.

EARLY SCHOOL AND WORK DISMISSALS ARE A HUGE MISTAKE.  Not that anyone is listening.

Rather than put schoolchildren on a bus for up to 11 hours, wouldn’t it be wiser to keep them at the schools?  At the schools, they would be warm and dry.  They would be fed.  They would have restrooms.  They could be kept occupied.  They could be in contact with their parents.  If I had a child on one of those stuck buses, I would be PISSED.  Like never before.  Seriously, I’d consider a lawsuit.  The City has certain duties, and in this case, the City failed to reasonably carry out its duties.  Yeah, I’d sue.  The mayor and the superintendent of schools both should be hung for this.

And why has no one mentioned that early school dismissals necessitate early work dismissal?  All of these worthless, finger-pointing politicos who collect fat salaries fail to realize that in some families (like, nearly all), both parents work.  DUH!  Someone needs to be home if the schools and daycare centers close.  You know, like a PARENT, for those families that don’t have housekeepers.  Stupid, narrow-minded rich people.  So, more traffic, even if businesses do not officially close early.  Some people still need to go home.

Unless the children were kept in school.  Unless employers (including all levels of government) were encouraged NOT to close.  If everyone had stayed calm and remained seated, the plows could have done their thing, and the resulting traffic would have been less hazardous.

I don’t totally let the State off the hook, though.  Plows could have been clearing the highway in my direction home, and yet I saw none.

As for the City of Providence, I would rate it a COMPLETE FAILURE.  The school bus situation is completely unacceptable.  Police escorts were sent to the stranded buses only after media coverage brought the situation to light.  There had been no communication among key personnel in the City and School Department.

Additionally, the anarchic gridlock I experienced at College and Memorial was happening at every major downtown intersection, including Dorrance and Washington, right next to City Hall.  Maybe I’m a swinging genius, but it seems to me that a simple solution would have been to send teams of police officers to each of these intersections.  Disable the lights, put a cop at each corner, and have them direct the traffic.  No more gridlock, and a relatively simple fix.

Seriously, it seemed as if all municipal departments were on strike.  There was no authority, no command, no communication.  Why such a complete breakdown over ten inches of snow?

State:  Borderline Failure
Providence:  Complete Failure
Citytown (my residence):  Pass

Tim called me on Sunday.  His drive home on Thursday took about four hours.  He finished his route even earlier than usual, before the snow and traffic kicked in.  However, he still had to return his truck and drive home, which meant traversing through Providence TWICE.  On the way back, his bladder was getting the best of him.  He did as he saw others do – temporarily abandon his car (highway traffic was at a standstill, so what difference would it make?) and head down the embankment to relieve himself.

Friday’s drive to work was much better.  The local streets were in good condition.  The highway was clear.

Until I got to downtown Providence.  What a mess.  It didn’t look much better than it did the night before.  What the fuck?!  All night and this was the best they could do?  (See “Complete Failure” grade, above.)

More snowfall over the weekend.  This one would be a piece of cake – no schools or businesses open.

Yesterday, driving to work, same as Friday.  Citytown was good, highways were clear.  Downtown Providence was a fucking mess.  Cars were getting stuck going up the street adjacent to our building.  It’s an incline, but nothing steep, not like the treacherous College Hill.  The street was covered in deep, soft snow, not ice, meaning it was plowable.  But not plowed.

This is incomprehensible to me.  My town’s streets are okay.  The State finally got its act together and cleared the highways.  But what’s up with Providence?  Is everyone sitting around with their thumbs up their asses?

I would consider writing a letter to the mayor’s office, but I think it would be a pointless exercise.  Let’s just say someone isn’t getting my vote when he runs for Governor.

Seriously, next snowstorm, let’s all consider sitting tight and letting the plows get out first.  Unfortunately, I fear just the opposite will happen.  The Snowbabies will leave even earlier.  Or maybe we’ll all get lucky, and they will just stay home.

By the way, my coworkers who left the office two hours before I did?  Most of them got home around the same time I did.

=^..^=