Lots of recriminations are flying about as to why Thursday afternoon’s drive home was as truly terrible as it was. Mayor Menino says it’s everyone else’s fault:
Mayor Thomas M. Menino blamed the state’s poor plowing. Then he blamed Hub employers for letting all their employees leave at the same time. Menino’s rookie public works chief blamed conflicting weather forecasts…. Menino noted critically that “it seemed like everybody decided yesterday at 1 p.m. to release their employees,” which happened to be the same time he sent city workers home.
And some say Menino could have done better.
Councilor Michael F. Flaherty blamed the mayor for bungling the response and “passing the buck.” … Flaherty, an at-large city councilor and former council president who is likely to run for mayor in 2009, blasted Menino’s administration. “They were forecasting it for days, and it hit exactly where and when they said,” Flaherty said. “Why didn’t we have better coordination, a better plan? We should own up to our shortcomings, take responsibility, and move forward with a better plan.” Aides for Menino would not respond to Flaherty’s remarks.
Those seem like pretty good points to me. Meanwhile, the Gov thought private employers could have done better.
Governor Deval Patrick and his transportation aides blamed Mother Nature for what they called an unusually intense and front-loaded storm that rapidly went to whiteout conditions, snarling roads before plows could even get to work. Patrick also blamed employers for not sending their workers home earlier.
And, to be sure, those who were stuck on the road could have done better too.
Still others said the blame lies with us: Those of us who didn’t buy gas Thursday morning and conked out on the ride home. Those of us who pushed past stoplights into city intersections and triggered gridlock. All of us who decided to hit the road at once in early afternoon, instead of waiting out the storm.
“Those who are trying to point fingers should look in the rear-view mirror and point at themselves,” said state Senator Steven A. Baddour, who heads the Legislature’s Transportation Committee and endured a four-hour ride home to Methuen from Beacon Hill. “I think a lot of people were just not prepared. It’s inexcusable to me that people ran out of gas. People should have been filling up in the morning.”
My own experience — two hours to go a couple of blocks on Beacon St. near Coolidge Corner and Comm. Ave. near BU, followed by ditching my car (legally!) on a sidestreet and taking the T home — suggests that the lack of police controlling intersections was a big problem. Gridlock was rampant, with drivers parking themselves in the middle of intersections, because dammit, they’re getting through this time! The result, of course, is that they didn’t move any faster than they otherwise would have, and neither did anyone else, since they prevented anyone from getting across when the light changed. I particularly enjoyed the semi that pulled across Beacon St. on Harvard Ave., and sat there for several cycles, single-handedly blocking Beacon St. for probably 20 minutes. Others who got stuck have told me similar tales.
I saw exactly one policeman on Beacon Street (at Beacon and Washington), and none on Comm. Ave., which was a parking lot. Maybe they had other stuff to do. But frankly, there wasn’t that much snow on the ground at the time this all happened, and it shouldn’t have been nearly as bad as it was. Gridlock in major intersections shuts things down really fast, so that’s my theory.
I don’t see the gridlock as the state’s fault — seems more like a city-level issue to me. Peter Gelzinis thinks the Gov bungled it, but it’s not clear to me what the state could have done so much better. Jay agrees that it’s not really Deval’s fault — though he also says he saw cops handling the traffic. I wish I had.
but so are overflowing queues. If the highways [Storrow up to Interstates] are at a standstill, then cars start backing up to get on to those roads, and those queues overflow into streets surrounding the entrances.
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p>It seems to me the state could do more work to alleviate gridlock nearest entrances to highways and on state routes [Route 9 for example], whereas the cities ought to be working on those other intersections which are ripe for gridlock.
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p>Personally, I’d like to see ’em writing tickets for driving like an ass [not clearing your car off, blocking the box, etc], but when manpower is short it’s hard to invest that manpower on trying to use the stick to get people to behave better in the future instead of trying to improve things now by keeping that manpower moving traffic along.
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p>I also think that some of this would go away if the MBTA had a “snow schedule” which had more runs throughout the day, to help people choose to use public transit when they know it’s going to snow. Capacity of highways is dramatically reduced during bad weather; capacity of rail isn’t reduced nearly as much and generally speaking has tons of extra capacity… so it only makes sense to crank up more MBTA runs [subway, streetcar, and commuter rail] when it’s known that the weather will be bad. Of course, commuters need to be encouraged to take the T on those days for it to be effective.
The MBTA seems barely capable of keeping a regular schedule.
Pers…it’s tough. In the morning, there was a collision and medical emergency on the green line near Kenmore, forcing them to use hideously packed shuttle buses, which hurt the shuttle bus fleet. Every driver was in play-all were kept on the job all day, is my understanding. Accidents on many highways (for example, route 2, causing a 90-minute bus delay) slowed everything way down, and the inspector at Alewife eventually ended up driving one of the buses. Commuter rail has to face speed restrictions in such weather. Rapid transit, actually, performed fairly well.
once I ditched my car worked surprisingly well. I waited about 15 minutes for a B train on Comm. Ave. (which no doubt had to deal with cars blocking the tracks), and my commuter rail train was only about 5 minutes late.
My 45 minute commute took 4 1/2 hours. I was stuck at Ashmont in Dot. for an hour with gridlock. Not a cop to be seen anywhere. Would this not be accountable to Menino?
Even in dry weather, UNLIKE NEW YORK, in Meninos Boston gridlock laws are not enforced! This was a huge factor.
Sorry but the “Urban Mechanic” has been broken for a long time. Personally I think “Mumbles” should be referred to as “Bumbles”.
I understand they had similar problems, I guess we can blame Patrick and Menino for that too.
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p>Anyway, I took the T home, bus ran a few minutes late but no problem. Why the hell is someone near Ashmont driving anyway? Maybe we do need a commuter tax for the city.
wasnt “mayor of Rhode Island.
Why I need my car for work is none of your business.
P.S. I often bike….weather permitting.
it is his business when you complain about traffic on a snow day in a public forum while you were contributing to the problem of traffic instead of the solution.
Let’s see, we just spent umptajillion smackers (and counting) vastly expanding the carrying capacity of the city’s central artery, while doing basically nothing for other transit.
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p>Consequently there are more cars going in and out of the city at once–and the cars are bigger too, being in fact light trucks.
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p>Kind of funny, then, that when the storm leaves folks gridlocked in their SUVs, everyone solemnly dances around trying to figure out whom they can blame.
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p>It would be much more honest to admit that these situations are implicit in the infrastructure choices we have made, or in any case had made for us.
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p>Meanwhile, the idling motor vehicles are doing their part to resolve this particular problem.
There was similar gridlock in Springfield and Hartford, perhaps elsewhere. This seems to just have been an extraordinary event, the odds of three major cities simultaneously dropping the ball seem awfully low.
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p>I tend to agree that many companies didn’t let their workers out early enough; they didn’t release until it was apparent that the snow was coming down very heavily. And the fact of the matter is that you can’t plow when you have gridlock.
that’s why I don’t blame anyone for not getting the streets plowed. No way anyone was plowing the Comm. Ave. that I was stuck on.
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p>I do wonder about the gridlock, though.
The forecast I heard from the WBZ meteorologist at 6AM (snow starts around noon, rapidly deteriorating conditions, 1-to-3″ / hour) told me that wherever I would be at 1PM, I was going to be there until the storm let up. However, I acknowledge that I’m a weather nerd and it didn’t seem that the news people were also conveying that message, so I don’t know if others heard what I heard. I made sure the whole family was home by noon.
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p>And, as we know now, that forecast was spot-on.
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p>Perhaps if the morning TV and radio reports said specifically, “get to wherever you need to be shortly after noon or be prepared to be stuck until it stops,” it might have helped a bit.
Honestly, the local
weathernews shows manage to get people so hyped up for every storm that it’s impossible to believe them anymore. When I heard about Thursday’s storm, I said to myself “here we go again”. Most of the time they get it dead wrong and then talk about how hard it is to predict this kind of thing. If people got out of work based on forecasts we’d all have 5-6 days more “vacation” each year.<
p>They were hyping today’s storm as a “major Nor’easter”, but it was a run-of-the-mill mild winter storm at best.
You’ve hit upon an important point regarding the news hype. As I listened to and watched coverage Thursday, a line from the Talking Heads song, “You’re talking a lot, but you’re not saying anything,” kept going through my mind. Which is why I only pay attention to the meteorologists and I try to dig a little deeper with the many weather resources available on the web. I think it would help if the news shows attempted to do this rather than just get giddy that they get to send a reporter out into the snow (what ever happened to Shelby Scott??).
why does NY enforce gridlock laws year round but not Boston?
Methinks those who protest how long it took to drive home should pipe down, for at least they GOT HOME. I was one of the unfortunate souls who had to leave his car in the middle of Route 9. And no, Senator Baddour, I had a FULL TANK OF GAS.
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p>I know the Globe thinks I should have taken the T, but I think selfish commuters who blocked intersections, poor planning (getting enough traffic cops to prevent blocking of intersections), and businesses not letting people out early enough (including Northeastern Univ., which decided to cancel classes AFTER 4PM when reports were that 1-3″/hr were going to fall starting b/w 12-1PM) should share the blame.
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p>Local news outlets are useless, the white stuff falls every year, and yet when more than a few inches fall its a top story. I depend on NOAA.
and you’re hitting on an important idea
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p>in addition to everyone who commuted one-person-per-auto, others must share the blame, including
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p> * every driver who blocked the box, ran out of gas, or otherwise acted selfishly or was unprepared
* every driver who could have left work earlier [or not come on that day] but instead left at the 1pm surge
* every business which contributed to the problem in the bullet point above by not managing their personnel
* the city and state for not using policemen effectively enough to keep traffic moving
* the MBTA for not having “snow day” schedules in which they increase their service throughout the day, so that more folks can get out of the city at mid-day
* the State Lege, for not providing the MBTA, state police, and other agencies with the financial resources necessary to execute better coordination and increased services during these extraordinary but predicted scenarios
While I agree that if and when a big snowstorm is in the forecast that people should avoid driving if and when possible and use public transportation, it’s also true that not everybody has that option, especially since people need to go out and do what they’ve got to do, and/or go out and make a living.
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p>The above-mentioned quote from your post articulates some good points about Thursday’s storm-related gridlock. People are too anxious to get going and in too much of a hurry, which, as the saying goes, makes more waste, imo, causing more gridlock. The fact that not nearly enough cops were out there to control and minimize a horrendous situation added to it dreadfully. Businesses and schools either letting people out too early or not early enough also contributed greatly to the problem.
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p>The fact that people took 6-10 hours to get home is outrageous, imo. Thursday’s storm, although it dumped a lot of snow on us, wasn’t like the
Blizzard of ’78, when much more snow was dumped on us, making it even tougher for lots of people to get home, many of who also got stranded at work or school for days afterwards. Because Thursday’s storm was a more manageable storm, there was no excuse for people not being able to get home ’til 8, 9 or ten o’clock at night! The gridlock laws should’ve been enforced, and more cops out there.
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p>I had things to do that day, and, aware that a big storm was in the forecast, took public transportation, which was slow, but I got home much, much sooner than I would’ve if I’d driven my car. This is an advantage of living in the city.
Hadley to Northampton got backed up for hours. I got backed up for an extra hour crossing the bridge from Hadley, and I was on the road and 11:30.
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p>In retrospect, probably schools should have been cancelled for the day, rather than doing half-days. But we’d just had two snow-days where the roads were clear by nine AM, and parents were getting restless.
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p>I think most people in MA are a bit spoiled because they know even big storms overnight only cause a small delay in the morning travel. We think we’re great drivers in bad weather, but the truth is, we’ve got great snow-removal.
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p>Except, when the snow’s falling, and all the cars are on the road, the plows can’t stay ahead of the traffic jams.
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p>I had to dig out a snow drift to get my car out this afternoon, to pick up the kids. Thought about how odd it is for everyone to assume they can maintain the same routines winter and summer, when perhaps we should just be hunkering down a bit in the winter. I guess the holidays must be approaching.
a good part of that is due to the fact that in many places, people often don’t cooperate by moving their cars to a garage or whatever. Back in the 1970’s, in Cambridge, for example, there’d be a ban on parking on one side of the street(s) or the other during snow emergencies, when snow-removal after a big storm was to take place. Now, that law’s not enforced, and many of the streets, especially the secondary/side streets remain in poor shape. That’s because people simply refused to cooperate! I believe that if people can afford to keep a car in the city, they can afford to spend some money on garaging their car for one night in a public garage, if one’s available.
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p>One thing that could be done, however, would be for the city of Cambridge, and more other cities and towns here in the Commonwealth to make school and municipal lots available for residents to park their cars in during the evening hours, until the next morning, while snow and ice removal and road sanding by DPW’s in various cities and towns takes place. I know that this is done in some cities and towns here in the Bay State, and would undoubtedly go a long way toward facilitating better snow and ice removal, as well as road sanding, etc.
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p>Sorry you had such a tough time digging your car out this afternoon. I’m not sure that altering one’s routines in the wintertime completely would be the way to go, since people have to go out and do what they have to do. However, taking public transportation if people have that option is a good idea. Gridlock laws here in the Bay State should be strictly enforced, as should Snow Emergency Parking Bans.
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p>Hunkering down for the winter doesn’t work for everyone, which definitely has to be taken into account. Since winter’s cold anyway, usually, it’s often best to keep moving around, imo, except if it’s super, super cold outside, or there’s a horribly big storm going on. or threatening to arrive.
…unless he did an anti-snow dance. I doubt very seriously that that would have done very much.
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p>IIRC, Ray Flynn got his “I sympathize with your pain” reputation merely by riding around on snow plows. Big deal. His riding around on snow plows didn’t get the snow plowed any more quickly than if he had merely overnighted it in the Parkman House.
he doesn’t control the Boston Police Department directly, but the Commissioner is his guy and presumably takes his phone calls, so I it seems fair to trace any failure on the part of the BPD to Menino.
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p>Plus, I’d pay good money to see that dance.