Evacuations
We are currently experiencing our first snow, possibly to 10 inches. Usually this is taken in stride, but because it started about 1:00 PM and was to include ice conditions and to peak during rush hour, schools let out early, which is very unusual. For some reason the ‘Storm Watch Emergency’ people suggested to businesses over the radio to let people out early.
Apparently they did. The roads are not yet bad (to me), but the traffic snarled on ALL major roads, Turnpike, and many of the side ‘escape’ routes one has to avoid congestion. People will be expected to take twice the time normally to get home.
Not a very good sign for escaping or evacuating a metropolitan area.
Update:
Worse than expected snarls, add triple time to get home, expect to make own dinner of cold meat loaf. Individual decision to apparently optimize behavior of cutting across intersection on a yellow light, and then stopping short when traffic stops to block the flow from the perpendicular, raises serious concerns how it adds any thing at all to optimizing the societal concern of better flow. No police in sight to enforce honesty. I believe maybe 5% cheating is all it takes to make cooperation less important. Boston area succumbing to lawless traffic jams.
Update 2:
Inability to pull off road to go shopping or eat a meal limits choices. No spots, no turns.
Update3: Normally I would be more sanguine about an unremarkable snowstorm over the course of the winter. Roads are clear in the burbs. Snow is fluffy. What caught my attention is the fact that it appeared businesses let people out at the same time per request and people left before the plows and sand trucks did their magic. The heavy equipment became part of the traffic jam. Hence not only Boston and towns close in but those further out over a very wide area experienced gridlock to the point of people simply parking and walking. Very different and unusual in that aspect, and quite the extended period of 6=7 hours.
People who waited to the end of the day were still stuck until 7 or later, eventhough others had left earlier. Yet today everything here looks normal except for parked cars filling parking lots.