I’ve never seen the streets around Rochester as clogged from the effects of falling as they were today for my commute home. (Those of you who recall that I was stopped for 15 hours on I-90 by a 1999 snowstorm will also realize that I didn’t see many of the streets around Rochester that day. Ahem.)
A storm moving in from the midwest hit in time for our evening rush hour. It’s not normally much of a rush hour, particularly for me. At either end of the day, with or without a storm, I can typically get to or from the office in about 15-20 minutes. Seattle this isn’t.
Today, with snow falling at a good clip for the first workday accumulation of the year — our first real accumulation at all was over the weekend — my travel time increased to about 45 minutes. We had probably gotten a few inches, maybe 3-4, before I went out to my car at the end of the day.
I’m pretty sure I was one of the lucky ones, as I was going against the grain on several routes that were miserably backed up. A friend reported that his girlfriend had left at 3:30 p.m., to arrive home at 5, going from Gates to Irondequoit.
It took me a while just to get off-campus simply because of the stacked traffic. I had never seen lines of this like. I saw northbound traffic on East River Road piled up from Jefferson Road down to at least Bailey Road. Southbound East River also had a lineup down through the middle of the three exits from campus, which never happens to this high-volume two-lane road. Westbound Jefferson Road going to the widened Ballantine Bridge was probably bumper to bumper well past campus. Yet eastbound Jefferson traffic also appeared to be stalled, which is much rarer. I couldn’t see much more than those roads, but it was a sight to behold.
The nearby roads were so clogged with slow-moving or stopped cars, I went out through an entrance that had a signal light as that at least gave me a way to get out. I exited onto East River Road to head south, and hit heavy bumper to bumper congestion for nearly the entire length until I turned off at Lehigh Station Road.
I stayed on Lehigh Station for most of the remaining trip. While it was slow, the only portion that was backed up was around the East Henrietta Road crossing. The real traffic I encountered while going east was seen on the north-south routes, so I dodged it. I made it safely home to be greeted by Lije’s attempt at saying, “Hi!” for the first time from his perch in Christen’s arms.
I’m just hoping that everyone else had a safe, if completely out-of-the-ordinary, trip home.
I don’t think there was anything that could have been done to make the situation better; the storm, as an act of nature, just hit at a time that made evening travel difficult. Add in that the first snowfall of the year typically slows things down more than the same storm would in February, and you’ve got a recipe for a really interesting commute.