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Drivers Stranded Overnight on I-95 in Virginia After Snowstorm

TurkeysGhost

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TurkeysGhost
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https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/transportation/never-seen-anything-like-it-drivers-stranded-for-15-hours-on-i-95-in-virginia/2926464/?_osource=SocialFlowTwt_DCBrand

Drivers have been stuck on Interstate 95 in the Stafford County, Virginia, area for more than 15 hours after multiple trucks crashed amid a major snowstorm that left snow and ice packed onto the road. Sen. Tim Kaine, who represents Virginia in the U.S. Senate, is among the drivers trapped on the highway.

Many drivers are out of gas. Some don't have food or water. Some say they have kids, pets and family members with medical needs in the car.

Gov. Ralph Northam told News4 that Virginia State Police, the Virginia Department of Transportation and other state officials and crews are working around the clock to help people stranded in the gridlock.
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Major tunnels are built with separate access bores for reaching emergencies. (They're handy for maintenance jobs too.) Maybe freeways need dedicated access lanes for the same purposes.

Yes, I'm puzzled about how to engineer them without increasing the width of those monstrous blights. Yes, I admit it would cost like the devil. But we've all been trapped on non-functioning autobahns, and nobody's done much about it so far.

When you build a road through steep country, you're building in trouble. Add winter weather and you lock in situations like the current one.
 
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sackett said:
Major tunnels are built with separate access bores for reaching emergencies. (They're handy for maintenance jobs too.) Maybe freeways need dedicated access lanes for the same purposes.
.....
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That's one of the purposes of the shoulders. Most major highways have full-width shoulders next to the travel lanes. But when semis are overturned across the road, nobody's going anywhere.

More reports:
https://wtop.com/traffic/2022/01/the-storm-paralyzed-traffic-on-some-roads/
https://wtop.com/virginia/2022/01/n...95-in-va-are-cold-hungry-and-asking-for-help/
 
Bob001 said:
That's one of the purposes of the shoulders. Most major highways have full-width shoulders next to the travel lanes. But when semis are overturned across the road, nobody's going anywhere.

More reports:
https://wtop.com/traffic/2022/01/the-storm-paralyzed-traffic-on-some-roads/
https://wtop.com/virginia/2022/01/n...95-in-va-are-cold-hungry-and-asking-for-help/
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Yes, an 18-wheeler turned sideways will, as they say, sever communications.

The shoulders (which are only one lane, alas) if unblocked are useful as long as Mr. Jack Assed respects them. But if he's in a hurry to get to his favorite sports bar to watch the big game and tries to bypass a slowdown, then crunch! crash! crotch!

My mighty brain visualizes a deck over the median (where it's wide enough; the m.b. is still working on that) that's denied to civilian traffic. Wreckers and ambulances would then have a way to access trouble, and, under supervision, private vehicles would be able to use it to escape a prolonged blockage.

Strict supervision, lights flashing and guns drawn. It only takes one fool to spoil the scene for everybody.
 
Or a bullet train between Richmond and DC, to reduce inefficient separate traffic. It's been proposed for decades that the US do something like that, the east coast is one long corridor of population centers. Connecting Boston-New York-Philadelphia-DC-Richmond-Raleigh-Columbia-Atlanta-Jacksonville-Orlando-Miami...that would be expensive and difficult, sure, but it's not outside our current technological and engineering capabilities. Hell, we could have done it back in the 1980s.
 
TragicMonkey said:
Or a bullet train between Richmond and DC, to reduce inefficient separate traffic. It's been proposed for decades that the US do something like that, the east coast is one long corridor of population centers. Connecting Boston-New York-Philadelphia-DC-Richmond-Raleigh-Columbia-Atlanta-Jacksonville-Orlando-Miami...that would be expensive and difficult, sure, but it's not outside our current technological and engineering capabilities. Hell, we could have done it back in the 1980s.
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The Northeast Corridor (Richmond-Washington-Baltimore-Philly-New York-Boston) is the one place in the US where a high speed rail would make perfect sense and would actually get used and could turn a profit real quick and even in the public transit adverse USA I don't understand why we haven't had one since the 80s at the latest.

As you say it would then be easy to build a stretch a year (Richmond to either Raleigh or maybe Hampton roads, then down to Atlanta, then to Florida) and have the entire Eastern Seaboard connecting within a decade or two.
 
JoeMorgue said:
The Northeast Corridor (Richmond-Washington-Baltimore-Philly-New York-Boston) is the one place in the US where a high speed rail would make perfect sense and would actually get used and could turn a profit real quick and even in the public transit adverse USA I don't understand why we haven't had one since the 80s at the latest.

As you say it would then be easy to build a stretch a year (Richmond to either Raleigh or maybe Hampton roads, then down to Atlanta, then to Florida) and have the entire Eastern Seaboard connecting within a decade or two.
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It shall be done! You do the digging and laying of rails, I'll start brainstorming mascots. Zippy the Zebra? Are zebras noted for speed? Cheetahs are, but nobody can see a cheetah print without being reminded of the 90s when everyone wore animal print underwear and had black faux silk sheets. God, I miss the 90s. Tacky times, to be sure, but so much fun. Whatever happened to Jewel? Remember when she was the biggest thing ever? Maybe she can be the mascot.
 
Easy there, the both of you... no need to go south of Jax. Containment protocols are barely holding as it is. [emoji3525]
 
This is going to be a controversial take but...

Okay apparently this started when a some big rigs got into an accident and blocked the road.

About 3 weeks back it took me almost 4 hours to get home because... a couple of big rigs got into an accident and blocked all 4 lanes of I-95 on the north side of Jacksonville.

Here's a radical idea. Vehicles so large that if they get into an accident they block the entire road and take hours to clear... are too ******* big.

Unless it's a massive pileup even a bad car accident leaves a lane or the shoulder open and can be cleared with regular tow trucks within a normal amount of time.

But let one big rig jackknife and the entire road is blocked and you have to call in a goddamn mega-super-special recovery vehicle to get them out.
 
JoeMorgue said:
This is going to be a controversial take but...

Okay apparently this started when a some big rigs got into an accident and blocked the road.

About 3 weeks back it took me almost 4 hours to get home because... a couple of big rigs got into an accident and blocked all 4 lanes of I-95 on the north side of Jacksonville.

Here's a radical idea. Vehicles so large that if they get into an accident they block the entire road and take hours to clear... are too ******* big.

Unless it's a massive pileup even a bad car accident leaves a lane or the shoulder open and can be cleared with regular tow trucks within a normal amount of time.

But let one big rig jackknife and the entire road is blocked and you have to call in a goddamn mega-super-special recovery vehicle to get them out.
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The crash and pileup are an especially intense problem, but the general issue is that many of these southern states simply have no infrastructure capability to respond to the rare instances of heavy snow and ice. Blocked and iced almost certainly contributed to the crash and are making it difficult to respond.

Realistically, closing these highways during snow emergencies like this might be the best play. Nobody can safely drive on roads that aren't appropriately plowed and salted, restricting them to emergency access only for a few days is probably the wisest play.
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
The crash and pileup are an especially intense problem, but the general issue is that many of these southern states simply have no infrastructure capability to respond to the rare instances of heavy snow and ice.
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This is Northern VA/DC, not Atlanta or Florida. They know what snow and ice are.
 
JoeMorgue said:
This is Northern VA/DC, not Atlanta or Florida. They know what snow and ice are.
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Other reports are pretty clear that an inability to respond to the winter weather is the primary cause:

On Tuesday, Virginia officials said the storm quickly overwhelmed their efforts to keep the highway clear. Rain turned to sleet that turned to snow, which fell at a rate of two inches an hour for four to five hours, according to Marcie Parker, a Virginia Department of Transportation engineer.

“That was entirely too much for us to keep up with,” she told reporters on Tuesday.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/04/us/i-95-closed-snowstorm-winter.html
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
The crash and pileup are an especially intense problem, but the general issue is that many of these southern states simply have no infrastructure capability to respond to the rare instances of heavy snow and ice.
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Yeah, but I've been hearing that truism since I first moved to the south in 1987. SC, VA, TN, GA...I lived in all of those places since then, and there wasn't a single year I didn't see snow and ice bad enough to cause road problems. "Oh, it never snows here!" was something said every year, as the snow was coming down. I was stuck for three days in a small Georgia town from the snow that never snows there! Sooner or later someone's got to accept that an infrequent occurence still needs to be prepared for.
 
sackett said:
.....
My mighty brain visualizes a deck over the median (where it's wide enough; the m.b. is still working on that) that's denied to civilian traffic. Wreckers and ambulances would then have a way to access trouble, and, under supervision, private vehicles would be able to use it to escape a prolonged blockage.
.....
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And how much would it cost to build a duplicate elevated highway to be used in rare emergencies? This is the worst storm in the Washington area in about four years. How many billions of your tax dollars would you spend for something like this?
 
JoeMorgue said:
This is Northern VA/DC, not Atlanta or Florida. They know what snow and ice are.
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They know what snow and ice are, not what to do about them. And what happened yesterday really is an unusual circumstance. The issue wasn't just snow, but multiple truck crashes resulting from it.
 
JoeMorgue said:
The Northeast Corridor (Richmond-Washington-Baltimore-Philly-New York-Boston) is the one place in the US where a high speed rail would make perfect sense and would actually get used and could turn a profit real quick and even in the public transit adverse USA I don't understand why we haven't had one since the 80s at the latest.
....
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People have been promoting this idea for a long time. There are already high-speed Acela trains running from DC to Boston. But bullet trains would be vastly expensive, and there's no reason to think that they would or could be profitable. It would require not just new trains, but rebuilding the entire trail infrastructure.

And almost all the people trapped on I95 are commuters and local travelers. They're not going to Boston. They're just going to or from work.
 
TragicMonkey said:
Yeah, but I've been hearing that truism since I first moved to the south in 1987. SC, VA, TN, GA...I lived in all of those places since then, and there wasn't a single year I didn't see snow and ice bad enough to cause road problems. "Oh, it never snows here!" was something said every year, as the snow was coming down. I was stuck for three days in a small Georgia town from the snow that never snows there! Sooner or later someone's got to accept that an infrequent occurrence still needs to be prepared for.
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I wonder if a cost benefit analysis would show that declaring a big "snow day" state of emergency to keep people home for a few days or so would be cheaper than having fleets of plows and salt trucks that are rarely used. The few plow trucks eventually makes it around, but odds are good the roads aren't going to be clear statewide come rush hour in the morning after a heavy snowfall.
 
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SuburbanTurkey said:
I wonder if a cost benefit analysis would show that declaring a big "snow day" state of emergency to keep people home for a few days or so would be cheaper than having fleets of plows and salt trucks that are rarely used.
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They already do that to some degree. The federal, state and local governments and public schools in the region were closed Monday, and major employers usually follow the government lead to some degree. But more snow fell than was predicted. And I'm listening to a commentator now who says that there were accidents involving six semis. Maybe the practical solution is to make the big trucks pull off the road.
 
Bob001 said:
They already do that to some degree. The federal, state and local governments and public schools in the region were closed Monday, and major employers usually follow the government lead to some degree. But more snow fell than was predicted. And I'm listening to a commentator now who says that there were accidents involving six semis. Maybe the practical solution is to make the big trucks pull off the road.
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Lol this is America. Government doesn't do stuff here.
 
Bob001 said:
They already do that to some degree. The federal, state and local governments and public schools in the region were closed Monday, and major employers usually follow the government lead to some degree. But more snow fell than was predicted. And I'm listening to a commentator now who says that there were accidents involving six semis. Maybe the practical solution is to make the big trucks pull off the road.
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What has the Awful House Menu gauge gotten to? [emoji1]

.

Gawd... I miss that place. [emoji3525]
 
A couple years ago, there was a major backup on I65 in Indiana. I heard that southbound lanes were backed up from Indianapolis all the way to Lafayette (60 miles) and had been that way overnight.

The confusing part for me at least us that there are exits. If something is in the way north of Indy, why aren't people funneling off at Lebanon or Zionsville or Frankfort or Dayton, for Pete's sake? If you can see the Zionsville exit, how long do you sit in the road before you figure it's going to be better getting off?
 
pgwenthold said:
A couple years ago, there was a major backup on I65 in Indiana. I heard that southbound lanes were backed up from Indianapolis all the way to Lafayette (60 miles) and had been that way overnight.

The confusing part for me at least us that there are exits. If something is in the way north of Indy, why aren't people funneling off at Lebanon or Zionsville or Frankfort or Dayton, for Pete's sake? If you can see the Zionsville exit, how long do you sit in the road before you figure it's going to be better getting off?
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This particular section of I95 goes through a largely rural area with few exits. And if you're stuck in traffic, you can't move unless the cars in front of you move, and a lot of people were trapped behind multiple crashes.
 
Bob001 said:
And how much would it cost to build a duplicate elevated highway to be used in rare emergencies? This is the worst storm in the Washington area in about four years. How many billions of your tax dollars would you spend for something like this?
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Did I say a duplicate highway? I said a deck. Picture a one-lane precast concrete structure about 300 mm above grade, with plentiful openings to accommodate runoff. It would have to be sturdy enough to support snowplows and other heavy equipment. It would be easy to repair or remove at need, and it would simplify moving in materials and machinery for maintenance, as I pointed out in my first post.

I also acknowledged that it would be expensive. But I doubt that such a low-tech mod would cost anything like as much as that Pie In The Sky High Speed Rail Line that laymen so like to propose.

Jesus, fellers. Am I the only one here who ever worked on highway construction? Yeah, probably.
 
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SuburbanTurkey said:
I wonder if a cost benefit analysis would show that declaring a big "snow day" state of emergency to keep people home for a few days or so would be cheaper than having fleets of plows and salt trucks that are rarely used. The few plow trucks eventually makes it around, but odds are good the roads aren't going to be clear statewide come rush hour in the morning after a heavy snowfall.
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They are Americans. No one can impinge on their individual freedums. The moment someone says "do this" they will be out in force demonstrating that they can and will do the opposite.
 
Steve said:
They are Americans. No one can impinge on their individual freedums. The moment someone says "do this" they will be out in force demonstrating that they can and will do the opposite.
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"Make sure you're chained up by the next exit, we're seeing the storm incoming and it's winter restrictions from there to Twylip and the pass will close after 3am. That's five hours from now. Only chained or snow tires from here on."

-- uhh, I'll just go around, they're just guessin' anyway. Im jus past that bend. It's only a few miles on the back road.
 
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It seemed to me that heavy-lift National Guard helicopters (Chinook CH47's) could have been sent within a few hours to grapple the trucks out of the roadways.
 
webfusion said:
It seemed to me that heavy-lift National Guard helicopters (Chinook CH47's) could have been sent within a few hours to grapple the trucks out of the roadways.
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That's what it seemed to you?
Wow. But wait...
I haven't seen vid of this scene, so I wonder, of the thousands of times this has happened across the country over the years... why haven't the Guard always been deployed to lift out heavy vehicles (where applicable, of course)?
Because, I've only been snowbound behind a couple/three (~12 hr max, Tahoe yeah!) and seen a few dozen others on vid... but no one's ever "done brung teh Guard" ! WooHoo!
How's that? Hell... why's that?
It was damn cold out there!
No kiddin' bruh... it was chillin'. [emoji3525]
 
You'd have had to stop all the other operations while the aircraft were sling loading. That is even if the VA guard has that capability. Rigging something to be sling loaded takes time and the flight operation is itself very dangerous. That's setting aside the amount of clearance you need in all directions for the aircraft to be that low. It was windy Monday too.
 
webfusion said:
According to the Virginia Department of Emergency Management, nobody even asked for the National Guard.
https://www.progress-index.com/stor...ional-guard-help-clear-95-snow-jam/9093237002

Rigging something to be sling-loaded from a Chinook sure don't take 36 hours!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3D6KUgZ1ns
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Does the Guard even have the capability? Under the conditions could sling loading have been done safely? Was there sufficient clearance around the other trucks so in the wind, the trucks wouldn't crash into anything while being lifted? When it got dark, is this really something you want to do on googles?
 
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JoeMorgue said:
I don't understand why we haven't had one since the 80s at the latest.
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Cost. The existing rail infrastructure simply cannot support a real high speed rail system across much of the line. Consider Connecticut - the rail line there isn't straight, at all. The current Acela can't go anywhere near its top speed through CT. In order to do real high speed rail through there, they'd have to lay all new track, buying up a lot of very expensive property.
 
JoeMorgue said:
This is going to be a controversial take but...

Okay apparently this started when a some big rigs got into an accident and blocked the road.

About 3 weeks back it took me almost 4 hours to get home because... a couple of big rigs got into an accident and blocked all 4 lanes of I-95 on the north side of Jacksonville.

Here's a radical idea. Vehicles so large that if they get into an accident they block the entire road and take hours to clear... are too ******* big.

Unless it's a massive pileup even a bad car accident leaves a lane or the shoulder open and can be cleared with regular tow trucks within a normal amount of time.

But let one big rig jackknife and the entire road is blocked and you have to call in a goddamn mega-super-special recovery vehicle to get them out.
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Your use of the word jackknife is telling. The largest trucks are all articulated, and it's those that lose control the fastest and spread themselves across the road the worst.
 
bonzombiekitty said:
Cost. The existing rail infrastructure simply cannot support a real high speed rail system across much of the line. Consider Connecticut - the rail line there isn't straight, at all. The current Acela can't go anywhere near its top speed through CT. In order to do real high speed rail through there, they'd have to lay all new track, buying up a lot of very expensive property.
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Too bad the US is a poor country with a tiny budget and small tax base, huh?
 
TragicMonkey said:
Too bad the US is a poor country with a tiny budget and small tax base, huh?
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It is interesting sometimes that so many things that improve the lives of people in other parts of the world are so difficult to accomplish in the greatest country humanity has ever known.
 
Lplus said:
Your use of the word jackknife is telling. The largest trucks are all articulated, and it's those that lose control the fastest and spread themselves across the road the worst.
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Telling?
 
TragicMonkey said:
Too bad the US is a poor country with a tiny budget and small tax base, huh?
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I mean, in the case of CT, you are talking about having to buy a ton of very, very expensive land and relocating a lot of people. That's a very densely populated area, and going through some very rich areas too. I can't imagine the cost of the land purchases alone. Nevermind the politics involved in trying to change the route in, say, Greenwich.
 
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bonzombiekitty said:
I mean, in the case of CT, you are talking about having to buy a ton of very, very expensive land and relocating a lot of people. That's a very densely populated area, and going through some very rich areas too. I can't imagine the cost of the land purchases alone. Nevermind the politics involved in trying to change the route in, say, Greenwich.
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Connecticut is the state that gave us Kelo; I'm pretty sure that between its massive power and infinite money the US could do pretty much anything it wants to when it comes to building projects in its own territory. It just has to want to enough.
 
I say... trailer a dozer as near as you can, run it up the shoulder pushing stranded cars aside (I suppose a bus to get them away would be polite. [emoji1] ), get to the semi, push it aside and Bob's your uncle.

At the least... it would make for amusing video for the nightly news. [emoji1]

That's almost workable if the state is willing to replace the damaged cars .. the trucking company can go screw themselves. [emoji1]
 
bonzombiekitty said:
I mean, in the case of CT, you are talking about having to buy a ton of very, very expensive land and relocating a lot of people. That's a very densely populated area, and going through some very rich areas too. I can't imagine the cost of the land purchases alone. Nevermind the politics involved in trying to change the route in, say, Greenwich.
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I tend to agree, especially with the local politics element.

The funny thing is that a high speed rail into large cities like NYC would probably be a massive boon for people owning land in these suburbs. Increasing the reasonable commute distance with high speed rail is going to send a lot of renters and homebuyers that otherwise would be captured closer to the city.

I imagine anti-density NIMBYs will be a major problem. Time and time again we've seen reasonable policies that would make urban living more tolerable meets a violent death by those who oppose anything that might increase housing density.
 
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