Governors Generate Gridlock
By Greg L | 15 May 2008 | Virginia Politics | 8 Comments
Elected officials want to reduce gridlock, and revamp the Wilson Bridge over the Potomac River. Good. Elected officials want to have a photo opportunity and news coverage of their largesse, so they set up a pavilion on the bridge for a ceremony no one cares about, prompting a traffic nightmare. Bad. Their solution to this? Chastise drivers for predictably responding to this circus, instead of canning the stupid thing and foregoing a meaningless press event. Pathetically stupid.
From WTOP:
Drivers are slowing down to see what’s happening. The ceremony started at 11 a.m. but setting up for the event started early Thursday.
While no lanes were closed during the morning rush hours, the right lane of I-95 before Interstate 295 is now shut down.
“There is definitely some rubber-necking going on, and some additional traffic. The message we would like to get out to motorists is, ‘Please keep driving,’” says Michelle Holland, spokeswoman for the Wilson Bridge Project.
The Inner Loop backups on the Maryland side of the bridge have extended more than 8 miles.
For 5 1/2 hours, the backups have been consistently 7 to 8 miles long.
WTOP Traffic Reporter Lisa Baden says it’s taken drivers as much as 1 hour 30 minutes to go those 7 or 8 miles.
How about this, Senator Warner, Govs. Tim Kaine and Martin O’Malley, and D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty: cancel the event, tell workers to clear the bridge as quickly as possible, and send a message to your constituents that having John Warner tighten a bolt for the cameras pales to the point if infinite meaningless to the intentional disruption and inconvenience you’ve caused for your constituents. When elected officials prove they care more about a photo opportunity than about an entirely avoidable inconvenience for thousands of residents, it is proof positive that these government officials do not deserve the positions or authority they hold. What value for the citizens is there really in holding some goofy ceremony on the Wilson Bridge?
What leadership might actually look like is Governor Kaine jumping on a bulldozer and plowing this whole shenanigan to the Maryland side of the bridge the moment he saw it. Just imagine the hugely positive press coverage of that as he royally pisses off every self-serving government official that drooled over the opportunity to have their grinning mug on a television broadcast. But Governor Kaine is precisely one of those self-serving government officials eager to take credit for a transportation program started well before he took office, to whom it would never occur to take actual leadership to defend the interests of Virginians from the negative impacts on their lives imposed by their own government. A leadership opportunity that would have benefitted the people, wasted again. What a surprise.
Tell drivers to stop rubber-necking. How ridiculous. How about government not creating meaningless public spectacles alongside critical transportation corridors that inevitaby invite this kind of behavior?
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I’d rather see Kaine jump on a lawnmower and cut down some of this overgrown grass around here. We don’t want to give illegal immigrants the “wrong impression” that we can’t maintain our lawns and open areas, do we?
The outer loop was backed up at 9 AM this morning all the way past the Van Dorn exit, heading back towards the Mixing Bowl.
Wow, and all that wasted gas! Unbelievable.
Just so these jerks can pat themselves on the back for being in charge when a project they had nothing to with is completed. Which should have happened 15 years ago, by the way! I hope a worker came in and re-tightened that bolt. I wouldn’t trust Warner to be able to handle a wheel’s lug nut, much less a bolt for an interstate bridge.
They all should have JUMPED off of the bridge and do some good for the area.
“I wouldn’t trust Warner to be able to handle a wheel’s lug nut”
Probably has trouble screwing in a lightbulb…
But no trouble screwing the country.
Lets see it was the politicians fault that people can not drive on the highway and keep their eyes focused on the road in front of them?
Why do people have to be concerned about the car sitting on the shoulder or the wreck on the south bound lanes of any road and especialy on the beltway and I-95 when they are traveling on the north bound lanes?
Of course it is the same if one is traveling south and the car is in the north bound lanes.
So whose fault is it that people do not know how to drive?