Editor’s note: Jim Battagliese is the director of Traffic and Weather Operations at WTOP.
WASHINGTON — Earlier this week, WTOP Traffic Reporter Bob Marbourg and I were in the WTOP Traffic Center talking about the blizzard and the effects on the area and one story pointed out just how impatient and dangerous local drivers can be.
I told Bob my experience driving to the station. Someone behind me wanted to turn right onto Rt. 7 and became impatient, with the right turn lane blocked with a mountain of snow. They proceeded to lean on their horn and then went around me and the car in front of me, to make a right turn on red. Of course, as I watched this illegal maneuver unfold in front of me, the light turned green, the car in front of me started to go straight through the intersection and narrowly missed the Honda that didn’t want to wait for the light to turn green.
Don’t be this kind of traffic jerk.
Earlier this week, Bob and I both agreed that the D.C. area is not ready for a normal rush hour yet. Bob said it on the air during his next traffic report, in the hopes that officials were listening. The problems we could see were many and weren’t just limited to the District or local roads. On the interstates, lanes would disappear or merge areas were blind because of giant mounds of snow.
We noticed people driving at highway speed on the Capital Beltway or Interstate 66 when their lane would disappear because of the snow and they couldn’t stop or merge, so they would hit the snow mound and roll over.
That wasn’t the worst of what we were going to see.
The worst of it came later in the week, when officials didn’t heed our warning and sent people back to work.
By Wednesday, it was the local roads that were hit hard because the snow removal process wasn’t fully completed. Neighborhoods were plowed enough for people to venture out to the stores and some decided it was OK to get to work and that created gridlock situations around the area and the angry phone calls started coming in to WTOP’s Traffic Center.
Motorists expected that they would be able to drive normally on the roads, despite our warnings that the roads were not yet ready for a rush hour. Right and left turn lanes hadn’t been plowed. Two-lane roads were suddenly squeezed down to a lane or a lane and a half, snarling traffic for miles and, in the process, affecting other nearby roads.
As more people headed out on the roads, what we were afraid would happen, happened.
It was 11:30 a.m. Wednesday, and we were still in the midst of a full blown rush hour. By 1 p.m., it had finally started to ease. Evening rush hour wouldn’t be any better.
During the entire day Wednesday, we dealt with angry phone calls, asking why we weren’t talking about their road. We tried to explain it’s not just your road — it’s every road.
This was no longer the normal traffic report about delays on the highways and a few accidents — there were hourslong backups on Reston Parkway, Norbeck Road, Georgia Avenue, Canal Road, Massachusetts Avenue, River Road, Rt. 123, East-West Highway, Branch Avenue … and the list went on and on. It didn’t matter where you were.
Despite the warnings, people were out on the roads and surprised that they couldn’t go anywhere and didn’t know why.
There was a snow-removal crew working on the Beltway’s Outer Loop, near Tyson’s, blocking the left side of the highway, which backed up traffic into Maryland, onto Southbound I-270 to Germantown, which was barely moving. In Montgomery County, a snow removal crew was working on Rt. 29, just inside the Beltway, which tied up Southbound Rt. 29 toward Burtonsville, prompting one caller to scream, “they shouldn’t be allowed to do this!”
We just had one of the worst blizzards to hit the D.C. area in almost 100 years, yet people couldn’t understand why life couldn’t simply snap back to normal.
The WTOP Traffic Center got reports of some of the worst outbursts of human behavior. Even Bob called someone a “self-entitled jackass” for driving up the shoulder of the Beltway and almost hitting a highway worker trying to clear an accident.
There was anger at the road crews, anger at city or county officials and anger at fellow motorists — some of it justified, most of it not. I’ve seen people on snow-covered streets playing games of chicken with other motorists because they feel they should have the right of way over the other person.
We just had 2- 3 feet of snow dumped on a region that has a problem when a thunderstorm rolls through. We all need to take a step back and realize that the area needs time to rebound from the Blizzard of 2016.
If you’re out on the road Thursday, instead of being that person stubbornly playing chicken with another person because you feel you’re entitled, take a deep breath and when you make eye contact with that other driver, smile and wave instead of flipping them off. Don’t block the box or be rude to other drivers. Remember, we’re all trying to get to work or home to see our families.
Maybe, with a little patience and kindness, we can show the rest of the country that D.C. really can function; it’s just Capitol Hill that’s dysfunctional — not the people who call this area home.
