As I write on the weekend for a column to be published Wednesday, Dec. 4, television stations are broadcasting lake-effect storms that already have dumped 4 feet of traffic-snarling snow with predictions that some areas will get 6 feet of the white stuff.
Millions of travelers’ plans to get home from their Thanksgiving holiday have gone awry. They are sitting in cold cars on impassable highways, or trapped in over-crowded airport terminals owing to flight cancellations.
Stormy weather that closes down airports in any part of the country result in flight cancellations throughout the nation.
How many of this holiday’s stranded travelers did their homework before hitting the highways or airwaves?
I, an Air Force veteran, haven’t flown since 1992. If I ever fly again, it will be in a box because air travel has become such a nightmare, even if everything goes right and on schedule.
Yes, most people buy airline tickets before weather at the time of travel can be predicted. That’s a risk fliers take.
Few bother to think of risks associated with flying in good weather, in an infrastructure jam-packed beyond reason.
Laws limit how many hours pilots can fly without rest, but several retired pilots tell me they are glad they’re not still in the cockpit because air traffic controllers are horrifically overworked without the same protections given to pilots.
Air travel is still statistically safer than surface travel. However, my bones are too old to sleep on a concrete airport floor or to be crammed into an ever-smaller seat. On my last flight, I couldn’t put my meal tray down because it hit me in the chest.
So, I drive everywhere I go; to Southern California and Arizona; to Utah; and even to Kentucky. I’ve promised Ruth that I’ll take her to Europe as soon as they build the bridge, but they’ll have to hurry because I’m 86 years old.
Nine months ago, I got in big trouble with my family for driving home from Utah in a major snowstorm.
We hit I-15 as it started to snow, but I had studied the storm on radar broadcast on the internet as it made its way up from California.
The northwestern edge of the storm was predicted to pass through Ogden on a northeastern route, about 30 miles from where we were. Having confidence in the forecast and with 66 winters of snow driving, I sallied forth.
We were in an all-wheel-drive SUV with all-weather tires, loaded with emergency food, 2.5 gallons of water, winter clothes, a thick quilt and cellphones.
The storm passed through Ogden at the predicted time and we had no trouble the rest of the way home.
Behind us, east of Boise, the storm made its way up to I-84 and there were over 100 slide-offs and the interstate closed.
Both air and road travel are hindered by the all-American distaste for taxes and voters have just elected our next president, who promises to cut taxes. Both air and ground infrastructure are dangerously inadequate and we lag behind our economic competitors, including China!
The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates a $2.6 trillion infrastructure investment gap during this decade.
We encountered a dismal example on our way to Eatonville two days before Thanksgiving. Westbound travelers over Snoqualmie Pass normally take Exit 25 off of I-90 on to Highway 18 to go south.
There has been a problem there for decades, but this Thanksgiving traffic turned the right westbound lane into a 2.25-mile parking lot owing to construction to speed vehicles and fish on their journeys.
Yes, fish; but that’s another column.
The $188 million construction will run into late 2025. The majority of costs are from Washington’s fuel tax. I don’t know whether federal money is involved.
Trump’s solution? Cut federal taxes and shift financing infrastructure costs to the states!
That’s a sure-fire prescription for a national transportation infrastructure disaster.
Terence L. Day and wife, Ruth, have lived in Pullman since 1972. In 2004, he retired after 32 years as a science communicator on the Washington State University faculty. His interests and reading are catholic (small c) and peripatetic. He welcomes emails to terence@moscow.com. Give him a piece of your mind.
