WASHINGTON — There are a few things we can count on in Washington these days. Politicians will continue to play politics and get nothing done, there will be a new Republican frontrunner next week and traffic will be horrible.
As traffic reporters, there are a couple of things we generally count on. Mondays will be relatively quiet and Friday afternoons will be crazy. Also, add rain or snow and well…it’s madness regardless of the day.
Now take a nice, warm, cloudy (which is a good thing — no sun glare) Monday in December and we traffic reporters figure it’ll be a quiet day. Yet to our surprise and with no clear reasons, Monday Dec. 5 became “Manic Monday.”
It was a day when it seemed that every major artery as well as one important secondary roadway had difficult issues. From a tragic fatal crash on Route 7 in the Tysons area, to a truck that spilled huge cut trees all over Interstate 95 in Fredericksburg, it was a day in which incidents would not stop occurring.
The only explanation we in the traffic center could come up with was that perhaps it had something to do with the onset of holiday afternoon office parties and just the general holiday crunch of extra folks out there shopping, etc. Whatever it was, the one thing we constantly learn is that whatever paradigm we think we have in place, it is always changing. The lesson remains the same, however. We have to have patience and allow extra time this holiday season to get from point A to point B safely.
My question is, “What’s next?” Jimmy “the rent is too damn high” McMillan surges in the polls as a Republican candidate. Lets face it, stranger things have happened.