In what must be the most notable event in Boston since we were attacked by the Mooninites, Thursday afternoon and evening saw this city completely paralyzed and gridlocked as our first major storm dumped nearly a foot of snow in a 7 hour time span.
Now, Boston is the kind of place that generally takes pride in our ability to slog through a winter storm, and in my 16 years here, I would say that most storms, even the big ones that bring 2 or 3 feet of snow are handled well and the people here don't panic when it starts snowing. They are fairly hardy people:
But on Thursday some kind of madness broke out and the entire transportation system seemed to suffer a complete breakdown. The event has lessons and warnings for us with regards to the ability of this city to evacuate and our reliance on cars should there ever be an emergency that requires such action. Thursday proved that such an evacuation would fail and thousands of motorists would end up stuck on the roads and forced to abandon the car as a way to get out.
This storm had been forecast widely and accurately for days. Everyone knew the precise time the snow would start and how much it would bring. At my office, the snow started at the exact moment forecast, about 1pm. At about 1:30pm, I left my office and with my partner we started our drive home. Our home is about 2 miles away, a drive that usually takes about 15 minutes. As we started driving, within 1 block of my office we hit traffic. And from that point on, for the next 5 hours we sat in bumper to bumper traffic, barely moving, idling our car, running through half a tank of gas trying along with everyone else force our way through gridlocked intersections.
We attempted to make the best of it. I managed to get a wifi connection on our laptop, so we were able to kill some time online and I tried to be amused at the whole spectacle. But three things were weighing heavily on my mind. One, I was horrified at the site of thousands and thousands of cars, idling burning through gas, going nowhere. I thought quite a bit about the waste of energy, the fumes and the incalculable amount of money that was being wasted as tanks of gasoline went running empty. I of course was part of the problem, since there I was in my car when I could have walked home. Some might say I should have used the subway, but honestly, the subway was also coming to a halt as street level trolleys were stuck in the same calamitous gridlock as the cars. But I could have walked, and there I was trapped in my car.
The second thing I was thinking about was what was an obvious demonstration of what would happen should Bostonians ever try to evacuate en mass at the same time. Apparently, everyone tried to get on the roads at the same time, the same kind of thing that would happen during an evacuation call. And what we saw was that the roadways, traffic signals and law enforcement would be totally inadequate. During my five hour commute, I saw very few police directing traffic. What I did see was every single intersection gridlocked in the most ridiculous fashion. Cars stuck in every direction, going nowhere and no one was in charge. At one point we got by a firehouse and the firemen were trying to direct traffic. Further down the road we encountered one officer doing the same. Other then that, we were on our own.
The third thing that was concerning me was the crockpot full of chile. You see that morning my partner has decided to start the chile and he left it on high when we left the house since we expected to be back home in a couple of hours. But as we sat in the car, and realized the thing had been probably boiling away for about 7 hours, I pictured walking in the door and finding a simmering smoldering mess and an evening of Chinese take-out.
When we were about 1/2 mile away from home, I finally decided to bail out of the car and walk the rest of way home, hatless and in a pair of sneakers. I ran the last 1/2 mile passing hundreds of cars, jumping through intersections of locked vehicles, abandoned vehicles and pedestrians who like me had a curious half smile of their faces, as if to say "is this for real?"
In the last 24 hours, there has been the start of an epic snow ball fight as state and city officials point fingers at each other, while the citizens here try to figure out what went so totally wrong and if this calamity could have been avoided.
Mayor Thomas M. Menino, who accused the state of being ill prepared for the storm, met with city department heads to talk about what went wrong.
"Yesterday was an aberration, I think," Menino said. "We have to do better. It has to be coordinated better than it was." State officials defended their response today to what they described as a "uniquely intense storm." Governor Deval Patrick said commuters did not heed warnings to go home before the snow hit.
"People were asked to leave early, and they didn't," Patrick said at a press conference. "The decisions made, particularly by private employers, was to not release as soon as we would have liked. It's not to lay the fault at private employers, but it's very hard in a practical manner to plow the roads when everybody is on them."
Bernard Cohen, the secretary of transportation, disputed Menino's contention that the state was not prepared without mentioning the mayor by name.
"This was by the numbers as far as I'm concerned," Cohen said "We were ready, we were prepared, we were doing all the things we would do in a storm like this. I also want to point out that, with all the attention that's been paid to the state roadway system in the Boston area, we are the state of Massachusetts, and if you look at the rest of the state we did a pretty good job."
I honestly don't know. I do know though that if there ever is an evacuation call, I am most certainly not jumping in my car and heading for the major evacuation routes. I saw what would happen, and it wasn't good.
Finally, I can proudly report that the chile was perfect. The timing and amount of liquid that had boiled away left the chile very thick and satisfying. It was delicious, and so I thank all the officials, the drivers of Boston and our insane reliance on cars for the delicious chile I ate and still have in my fridge.