My bigger question is why did all these people just sit there? After a couple hours, simply browsing your phone would have told you the severity of the issue. Get your car to the shoulder, write a note with your phone number, and then walk somewhere to get food/water/a ride
The areas of stoppage were reportedly from Dumfries to Carmel Church (an exit or so up from Doswell / Kings Dominion). I drove that stretch in the fall, and there was a ton of construction, much of that related to the express lane extension projects. Part of the issues may arise from these private partnerships that choose to not open 25 miles or more of roadway until every inch is complete and amortization as a whole can begin. We’ve seen much of the same thing on I-66, with roads (with divots because of the lane shifts) have shoulders removed and seem to not have been resurfaced for years because this is “temporary” construction.
In many of these stretches, there is literally nowhere to pull off (even if you could somehow persuade cars in other lanes to let you get over). Because of the construction, there is practically nowhere to walk — especially if kids or anybody with any level of impairment is involved, not to mention the piled-up snow on the side and the general icing over that would have occurred by then. Many of the people who are just passing through aren’t going to hazard abandoning their car in an unfamiliar place.
If states would use their leverage in these public-private partnerships to prioritize road safety in the middle of all this, think of the tweaks that could be done. There could’ve been adequate safety cutovers (with plows treating them and placed there ahead of time) so that vehicles could’ve done the turnarounds that used to be possible – – and which used to be done by the state police at multiple spots along the roadway. There could have been dozens of escape valves as it were that could’ve routed traffic to exits (or to portions of the expressway that were cleared, and separated so that they did not interfere with emergency vehicles) that were targeted for clearing. I don’t know if this was done, but there could’ve been messaging to check Virginia 511 (either by calling or the website) or tune to the roadway travel frequency or the WTOP FM or AM to get updates on such things.
Instead, in what I suspect to be the case, they may not have proactively deployed enough clearing vehicles by existing turnarounds and exits, nor could they for many stretches of roadway. Additionally, I would contend that they appear to have chosen under the terms of the partnership to let Transurban take away miles and miles of shoulders for extended period of time (easier for them to wall stuff off and work on their timeline) versus building the lanes incrementally and progressively open them to return sections of highway to adequate safety standards as soon as possible. As a result, those who would’ve chosen to pull off (which again would have come with its own challenges) may have had even less of an option to do so then they would have normally.
Going back to the issue of whether proper leadership could improve the situation, something they could do starting this week on 95 and 66 is implement evacuation measures including sufficient roadway cutovers. Of course, one would have to check the terms of the “private partnership“ and see if that could be easily done or whether it would have to take escalated action from the commonwealth. As for me, when I traveled on 66 to 81 last month, the condition of the roadway from the Beltway to Gainesville ensured that my return trip was going to be anywhere but 66.