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Here are a few tips on what you can do when the area is hit with snow or ice
Winter travel 101 T
BY ROBERT THOMSON
wo weeks ago, we told you what our local transportation departments say they can do for you during a winter storm. Here’s a look at what you can do for yourself when the
Washington area is hit with snow or ice. This advice comes from transportation officials, Metro maintenance staff, plow drivers and ordinary travelers who have been getting around the area for years.
DRIVING
Before driving. Get snow or ice off the vehicle, including the roof and side windows. You will be doing yourself a favor, because you will be able to see all
around.Andyou’ll be doing other drivers a favor, because they hate itwhencars finally pick up speed and lose that crown of snow on top. Also, be sure the battery is charged. Check wiper blades, tires, tire
jack,
antifreezeandlights.Keep gas tanks at least half full. Carryan emergency kit that includes a small shovel; a bag of rock salt, sand or cat litter; a scraper and brush; a flashlight with extra batteries; jumper cables; blankets; and a first-aid kit.
When driving. Don’t use cruise control, allow extra room for stopping or for taking evasive action, turn your lights on and use your turn signals. Stick with the main roads as long as you can rather than detouring onto secondary routes.
Watch for pedestrians. During heavy storms, the streets may be in better condition than the sidewalks, so pedestri- ans will hop over snowbanks and walk wherever they can.
Don’t crowdthe plow. Plow operators ask, What’s the point of trying to get ahead of trucks that are making the road behind them safer to use? Also, a plow operator has blind spots, especially behind and to the left.
ONTRANSIT
Metrorail: Metro clears the areas around rail station entrances, but the walk to the entrancemay be a struggle. Platform paving tiles can be treacherous beneath ice and
snow.Metrorail will shut above-ground servicewhenthe snowfall reaches eight inches, so watch for announce- ments and be prepared to adjust your schedule.
Metrobus:Metro does not plow around bus stops. Bus routes and schedules become very fickle in snow and ice. Seek out buses that follow snow emergency routes. Don’t rely heavily on the NextBus information system. It can’t account for detours or traffic incidents.
MetroAccess: Car and van service for riders who are disabled operates in bad weather, but as conditions deteriorate, trips are canceled. People with appoint- ments should seek status updates.
YOURSTREET
Clearing sidewalks. Rules vary, but most jurisdictions expect property owners to get out within a certain number of hours and clear their sidewalks. They don’t expectyouto throw thesnowin the street.Whenclearing the driveway, toss thesnowto the
right.Thatmakes it less likely the plow will push that snow right back across the driveway entrance.
DR. GRIDLOCK Robert Thomson
Gabe Klein’s mistakes paled next to problems he faced
Clearing
streets.Much of the clearing work goes to contractors, whose trucks might not bear the emblem of the agency that hired them. The D.C. departments of public works andtransportationteamuponstreet clearing in the city. The Virginia Department of Transporta- tion takes care of interstates, main roads and neighborhood streets within its
turf.TheMaryland
State Highway Administration handles the state’s numbered roads, while counties and municipalities take care of the rest.
Snow emergency routes. Some jurisdictions require owners to get their vehicles off snow emergency routes after the jurisdiction declares an emergency. This affects many District residents, where the PublicWorks Depart- ment tows vehicles remaining on those routes and impos- es stiff fines.
RESOURCES
Maryland Before leaving home, check conditions by going online to
marylandroads.com. There, under the Ice & Snow logo, you’ll
find a link to a list of all the county highway department phones. Click on the CHART information center to find more snow emergency information, traffic camera views, weather updates, maps showing average travel speeds on highways and road-closing reports. Go to “Contact Us” and click on the
“Service Request” link if you spot a problem. There’s also a Winter StormHotline at 800-327-3125 for updates on conditions. Maryland also sends out road information on a Twitter feed:
twitter.com/#!/MDSHA.
The District Monitor media reports in case a snow emergency is declared or
trash and recycling pickups are suspended. To report problems, call theD.C. Service Request Center at 311, or go to the District Department of TransportationWeb site at
ddot.dc.gov/DC/DDOT and click on the Service Request Center button in the upper left. There’s also a button marked Traffic Alerts. DDOT has a very active Twitter feed, at
twitter.com/#!/DDOTDC.
Virginia To report road hazards or to ask questions about the state roads, call
800-FOR-ROAD (800-367-7623). The 511 traveler-information service provides updates on weather and road conditions. Call 511 from any phone in Virginia, or go to
511virginia.org and view traffic cameras, a map of road conditions and a detailed road condition report. The 511 system also has a very active Twitter feed, at
twitter.com/#!/VaDOT.
Metro Metrorail, Metrobus: Go to Metro’s home page at
wmata.com and
look at the lower left for the link that will allow you to sign up for e-mail alerts. Service updates are available by calling 202-962-1212. Report a problem by calling 202-637-1328. Check Metro’s Twitter feed at
twitter.com/#!/metroopensdoors.
MetroAccess: Passengers with scheduled rides should call 301-562- 5360 for a status update.
thomsonr@washpost.com I’
msorry to see Gabe Klein leaving as director of the D.C. transportation
department after an energetic two years, which I described on our blog last week. This letter writer has a different view.
Dear Dr. Gridlock: You are aptly named, as “gridlock” is more of what Klein and his anti-auto policies have wrought. Expanding bike lanes on major arteries in a commuter city and lessening drivers’ ability to get around town apparently is not just the province of the simple-minded “global warming” fanatics who see the automobile as an arch enemy.
Diminishing lanes as auto ownership expands for the pipe dream of having hordes of bike-riding commuters is only part of the agenda they share with Klein. Nothing better
demonstrates the arrogant approach of Klein and the elites than the Capital Bikeshare
program.No debate, no discussion, no citizen input. They also make street
parking more expensive and more difficult by yanking out meters and leaving one kiosk- type thing, which is not only confusing but also time- consuming. Klein and his crowd hate
cars, so if they make it incredibly difficult and mind- blowingly expensive to park, then they will wear us down and we will cease driving to and around the District. If elites inD.C. government
make it any more difficult to journey into town, our regional neighbors will stay at home enjoying life and spending money in their local establish- ments. This will have a devast- ating effect onD.C. business. Must I hassle to enjoy dinner
at Clyde’s in Georgetown if I can tool out to Tysons Corner unimpeded by childishly willful political impediments as gridlock caused by anti-car traffic engineering and incredibly expensive meters and have the same experience without the annoyance at the Clyde’s at Tysons? The anti-car bias extends to
the manipulation of the traffic signals—one light and stop, one light and stop, one light and stop—and to changing the timing of crosswalk lights all over town regardless of the lack of pedestrian traffic. Klein, like his boss,Mayor
Adrian M. Fenty, was great at swanning around articulating his bubble-headed elitist views, but could not meet the most basic realities of his job:We experienced the worst snow removal since the Barry days, and that was one of the few real responsibilities Klein had. Our newmayor would do
well to remember that the needs of the people come first,
DR. G’S TIPS
FOOTBALL TODAYAT FEDEX The Redskins football game
with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers begins at 1 p.m.
Sunday.The stadi- um parking lots open four hours before game time, but the main roads in the Landover areawill be crowded, particularly around the Landover Road, Arena Drive and CentralAvenue interchangeswith
theCapitalBeltway.Best bet:Take Metro’s Blue Line to the Morgan Boulevard Station andwalk north a little less than a mile to the stadium.
REDLINEREPAIRS Metro recently completed re-
pairs to the Rockville platform and is about to launch a similar effort at Shady Grove. These proj-
THE DAILY QUIZ
What is the name of the singing group currently performing the irreverant holiday road show, “Oy Vey in a Manger,” at Theater J?
(Hint: The answer can be found in the Going Out Guide in today’s Washington Post Magazine. )
EARN 5 POINTS: Find the answer, then go to
washingtonpost.com/postpoints and click on “Quizzes” to enter the correct response.
ectsarepartof thelong-termreha- bilitation program on the Red Line, an effort that will continue through2013. TheShadyGroveworkis sched-
uled to begin Friday. Because the stationis at the endof the line, the workpatternwillbedifferent than it was at Rockville. The transit authority says the Shady Grove repairs will be done around the clock, with one side of the plat- formclosed. Thatmeans it proba- bly will take passengers longer to board trains and clear the plat- form,particularly at rushperiods. Metro is timing the work to
start during the holiday period, whenridershiptends todropabit, but this is still going to be difficult for riders at the station.
Workerswill replacedeteriorat-
ed sections of the platform edges with new concrete, an effort that should extend through January. During the spring, workers will replace the platform tiles with a newsurface.
GREENLINEWORK Metro also is going to begin
some midday work on the Green Line this week. While trains will be sharing one track to get around thework between Branch Avenue and Naylor Road, this should not cause delays, because of the gaps betweenmidday trains. Theweekdaywork is scheduled
to start Monday and continue through Dec. 31 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
POINTS EVENTS
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ANOTHERSPEEDCAMERA The Maryland State Highway
Administration has added one more speed camera zone and tak- enone away. The state places these cameras
in highway work zones under a lawpassedin2009. The new camera zone is on the
Baltimore-Washington Parkway, just south of Interstate 695 (the BaltimoreBeltway) inAnneArun- del County, where the speed limit is 55mph.Until Dec. 29, the own- ers of vehicles that go at least 12 mph over the 55 mph speed limit will get warning notices. After that, it’s a$40 fine. The state recently removed the
camera zone that had been in ef- fect at Route 15 and Hayward
Road on the north side of Freder- ick, because the construction is done. The other active locations for
work zone cameras are the Inter- county Connector construction area on I-95 between Routes 198 and 212, the Baltimore Beltway at Charles Street, theBaltimoreBelt- way at Liberty Road and the I-95 ElectronicTollLaneproject inBal- timoreCounty.
CONNECTORSTORECLOSING TheConnectorStore at theRes-
ton East Park and Ride onWiehle Avenue is scheduled to close on Dec. 22. This is part of the phased clos-
ing of the park and ride as part of the constructionof theWiehleAv-
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enue Metro station, scheduled to bedone in2013. The Connector stores offer
transit schedules, brochures, fare cardsandpasses,andinformation about commuting options in NorthernVirginia. Severalother storeswill change
theirhoursstartingJan.3.Theone at the Herndon-Monroe Park and Ride will be openMondays, Tues- days and Thursdays from 6:30 to 10:30 a.m., andfrom3 to 7p.m. The store at the Tysons West-
park Transit Station will be open MondaysthroughThursdaysfrom 6:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. and on Fridays from10 a.m. to 6p.m.
Formore transportation news, go to
washingtonpost.com/transportation.
A complete list of PostPoints Spots can be found at
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not some social agenda. The citizenry are not a Petri dish for the elites in which to experiment, but rather families struggling and sacrificing to survive during tough times who pray that government is an angel not an enemy. —Davis J. Tomasin, District
For most of this decade, the
D.C. region failed to make real headway in easing the problem of getting around. The Klein era showed it doesn’t have to be that
way.Many of the ideas he pushed—streetcars, new styles of pedestrian crossings and bike lanes—didn’t originate with him. Some, he said, were “back to the future ideas.” But he dusted off those plans, promoted them with the public and advanced them. His style was to try out a
program, see how it worked and then adjust to correct problems. “There’s so much that we’ve worked on,” he said. Each time he worked on something that affected how thousands of people get around, he was bound to draw criticism. The best way to avoid problems in your program is not to have a program. Klein’s department made a
mistake in the first version of bike lanes on Pennsylvania Avenue. But that was nothing like the colossal mistake that 20th-century planners made when they tried to retrofit America’s streetcar and pedestrian cities for the automobile. Congested cities, in which people have to carefully calculate crosstown trips, were the result. Klein was trying to restore
an old balance that would allow everyone to move around more easily. “People think about having to move X number of cars,” he said. “We’ve tried to think about how we’re moving people. . . . We want to provide people with attractive choices.” Then again, sometimes you
just need to move the snow. Klein faced a bigger challenge with that last winter than any of his predecessors, and his department held its own in the midst of a natural disaster. The fact that he won’t be remembered for the storms is a credit to the department’s performance. Instead, he should be remembered for turning transportation plans into realities and then dealing with the consequences. “I didn’t take this job to react to things,” he said.
Dr. Gridlock also appears Thursday in Local Living. Comments and questions are welcome and may be used in a column, along with the writer’s name and home community.Write to Dr. Gridlock at TheWashington Post, 1150 15th St. NW,Washington, D.C. 20071. By e- mail:
drgridlock@washpost.com. His blog:
washingtonpost.com/ drgridlock. On Twitter: drgridlock.
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 12, 2010
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