This Is Philadelphia’s Wildfire

I mean, I guess it’s kinda big, but when I saw the headline with “huge pothole” in it, I kind of was hoping for car-swallowing huge. Doesn’t the news media have standards anymore?!

Huge I-95 Pothole Stalls Traffic [NBC 10]

Anti-Violence Event Hopes To Avoid Shootings

Sadly, the safety event did not go off without a hitch, as 250 people were killed when the Safetymobile missed a turn and went skidding into the crowd. Better luck next year!

Safety event’s goal: Zero traffic fatalities [Burlington County Times]

Ha, Old People Don’t Have Time To Cross Street

A new study from AAA says that traffic signals change too quickly for old people to cross the street. As a young person, I only have one response: Ha ha ha you may have Social Security and pensions and money and no work to do and have led a good life but at least I can cross the street in a timely manner! Score one for young people!

According to The Intelligencer, the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety found that old people walk 0.5 to 0.8 feet per second slower than young people, making them unable to cross the street without a car running over them. (Unfunny fact: Actually, 170 pedestrians died in the state last year; a third were over 60.)

But, for the most part, this just inconveniences old people while we all run across the street 20 times before they get to the center median.

Study: Traffic signals change too quickly for some seniors [Doylestown Intelligencer]

Thousands Of Cars No Match For Red-Tailed Hawk

Traffic on I-95 was “snarled” this morning, preventing thousands of people in this car city from getting to their Stephen Starr restaurants on time.

Anyway, traffic was backed up because there was a red-tailed hawk in the left lane near the Academy Road exit, which is also near where I grew up. Coincidence? Uh, yes, of course. The bird backed up traffic on both sides for about an hour, largely because of gaper delays. But despite everyone slowly driving by the hawk at 10 miles per hour, nobody knew what the hell it was.

A radio report mentioned it might be an osprey. Or it could have been an owl, said a representative of the Philadelphia Animal Care and Control Association.

It looked like one, according to Inquirer Inqlings columnist Michael Klein, who was driving by.

But New Jersey editor Kurt Heine was fairly certain: “It was a red-tailed hawk,” he said. “This was a brown and white bird, a big raptor.”

What did I say before about taking breaking news media reports with a grain of salt? Yeah, that. I think the real question is, what the hell kind of owls do we have in this city if they can be confused for hawks? Will we one day be under siege from giant owls with the wingspans of small trucks? Hopefully, because then Steven Seagal could save us, and if I remember correctly from sixth grade there’s nudity in that movie, too.

It was a hawk that snarled I-95 this morning [Inquirer]

Baseball Bat Purchase Turns Into Near-Riot

It’s not just race riots that are in our impending future. No, yesterday there was nearly a riot in a shopping center in Jersey thanks to your friend and mine, the Great Ides of April Nor’easter of 2007.

The incident began after flooding closed Route 1, sending drivers to a street which the Nassau Park Shopping Center empties out onto. Naturally, traffic was backed up, and the Trenton Times does a great job of getting quotes from enraged drivers who just wanted to purchase some pogs or whatever.

• “I don’t know quite what the trouble is,” Tom Quigley of Hopewell said as he and his son, Dylan, sat in their pickup truck stopped in traffic. “We just came to get a new (baseball) bat…. It’s as if someone playing with a model train set down in the basement moved all the tracks around without telling the conductor,” Quigley said, trying to explain the motorized chaos surrounding him.
• “This is just crazy. I’m getting sick sitting here. I started out at Wal-Mart and now I’m here. It’s been two and a half hours and this is how far I’ve gotten,” one woman, who declined to give her name, said as her car idled near the Best Buy store, only a few hundred feet from where her journey home had begun.
• A man traveling a few vehicles behind her described the situation with a string of expletives, then proceeded to give his analysis of the problem. “Half the people out here are idiots. No one out knows how to take turns. Everyone’s out for themself and no one’s getting anywhere. Take this woman — she’s stayed on that pickup’s bumper and hasn’t let anyone in,” he said, pointing to the sport utility vehicle directly in front of him. He did not give his name.

Hm. The reporter should have introduced Tom to that expletive-laden man. Tom could have lent Cursey McGee his bat to smash that SUV to bits. And that would have made that Wal-Mart shopper happier, too. It’s a win for everyone involved!

Highway closure traps shoppers [Trenton Times]

Prison To Close; Worse People To Move In?

See the people in the photo at right? That is the America’s new enemy. (Not specifically them, but I was searching for “white affluent-looking couple with no taste” and I think this stock photo fits it perfectly.)

But, anyway, the white suburban family with at least one kid is America’s new enemy not so much for what it it — though its members are usually annoying, natch — but for what it brings: Traffic. And on suburban Philadelphia roads originally designed for plows and the Amish and the one motor coach owned by the Pitcairn family (or whatever), traffic is a major problem with new developments sprout up and suddenly you’re sitting in traffic on Old Goat Road, one lane each way, and it takes you 45 minutes to get to the ACME down the street.

In fact, traffic is such a problem that Skippack residents are ready to rally to keep a jail in their community. The state is contemplating moving decades-old Graterford Prison, and Skippack Township residents are worried about new condos and other houses, and worried about the extra traffic it would bring.

The site is currently only zoned for a prison, farming or open space, but if the state can make a killing off of a nice-sized plot of land if Graterford were to be closed… well… let’s just say if you live in the ‘burbs, you’re going to be stuck in traffic for the remainder of your natural life. Maybe longer.

Worse than jail? Sprawl [Inquirer]

By The Time You’ve Read This You’ve Already Read It

A late-breaking update from the Inquirer brings the following news:

As of 7:40 this morning, the eastbound Admiral Wilson Boulevard was closed from the Ben Franklin Bridge tolls to Airport Circle, and westbound traffic was reduced to one lane, according to traffic.com.

Flooding is also diverting or slowing motorists on eastbound Route 30 (White Horse Pike) at the Collingswood Circle, on Atlantic Avenue in Camden near Route 676, and in both directions along Route 73 at Main Street (Route 537) in Maple Shade.

In Philadelphia, a trouble spot was 26th Street near Girard Avenue.

If you sat in traffic all morning on your way to work, you can relax in your cubicle with Philly.com and read about the traffic you sat in on your way to work.

Rain snarls commute; more tomorrow [Inquirer]

Nightmare on I-95

Yikes. Might want to avoid that area for however long it takes to clean that up, which should be sometime in 2022.

Editor’s Note: Earlier this morning, I’m fairly sure that on KYW 1060, the reporter said an accident on the turnpike was caused by a truck that crashed and caught fire — and it was hard to put out, because it was a truck carrying paper. Tee hee.

Three Major Backups Causing Traffic Delays [KYW 1060]

Actually, This Sounds Kind Of Awesome

Are you a local blogger not currently employed by, say, a newspaper? If so, Traffic.com wants you:

Are you a witty and enthusiastic writer looking for an AMAZING summer gig?

Traffic.com is looking for an experienced blogger to write from the road during a two week promotional road trip, beginning in Philadelphia and ending in Los Angeles.

Blogger will be responsible for posting daily entries. Content should include interviews with commuters, local event coverage, traffic reporting, etc. Trip will begin around July 7th and end approximately July 21st.

MUST have previous blogging experiece–preferably an active blog with loyal readership.

We’re looking in your direction, Albert Yee!

Blogger/Adventurer for Cross-Country Trip [Craigslist]
Photo by Mike 626, licensed via Creative Commons

Chestnut Street to allow right turns, nothing to change

In what is clearly the biggest news of the day, City Council is planning on soon allowing drivers to turn right on Chestnut Street.

The strange rule banning right hand turns on the street dates to the late 1990s, when the ban on all traffic except buses was lifted. The right line was still designated bus only, which the federal government required in order to give the city $800,000.

I know it’s legal and all to place restrictions on federal money, but this sort of seems like the most confusing, weird requirement for money I’ve heard. (Well, it makes a little more sense than the highway funds-tied-to-21-as-the-drinking-age one, but still.)

The city lost the federal money when City Council lifted the right turn ban from Broad to Sixth in 2002, which means right now the ban on right turns is only from 18th to 15th.

Anyway, the right lane will remain bus only, but right turns will be allowed, which leads to some interesting questions about how that’s possible, but, really: does this really matter? Everyone turns right on Chestnut Street anyway. Heck, you probably did it today.

Chestnut St. right-turn ban may end [Inky]