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. |
