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Getting Around: PennDOT, police should act like a team
Sunday, January 23, 2000 By Joe Grata, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
PennDOT is spending about $350,000 a year to operate five special "Parkway Patrol" trucks on the Parkway East, Parkway West and Interstate 279 north of the city.
Part of the purpose is to move vehicles off to the side of the road as quickly as possible during weekday rush hours when they become disabled for any number of reasons, including running out of gas, mechanical failure and minor accidents.
The goal is to clear the highway and restore a free flow of traffic within 10 minutes. "Incident management" is what they call this modern-day strategy to minimize congestion on urban interstates.
So why did it take more like 10 hours to reopen the Parkway East outbound after a tractor-trailer crashed through the guide rail and went down a small hillside between Business Route 22 (Monroeville) and Penn Hills exits last week?
The incident caused long rush-hour delays, which would have been significantly longer except that many people were off for the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial holiday.
"Once the [truck driver] was recovered and the trailer was secured, outbound traffic should have been permitted to move," Dick Kraft of Bethel Park said in an e-mail. "It's hard to estimate how many lives were affected: appointments were missed, plans were disrupted, treatments were delayed, etc. How many cars overheated or ran out of gas?"
Surely, Kraft said, PennDOT must have a "Plan B."
Response. Well, Dick, I'm not convinced PennDOT or the state police even have a Plan A. If so, maybe they'll share it with us.
PennDOT said it was the "state police's call" to close the parkway, backing traffic through the Squirrel Hill Tunnel and causing delays of two hours even though the truck was down the hillside.
Then, state police failed to arrange for the appropriate heavy equipment to remove the rig, another time-consuming snafu.
I can't think of a good reason why the road wasn't reopened after the driver was off to a hospital. PennDOT has more than enough orange barrels to place on the shoulder where the truck crashed through the guide rail. The rig and its partly spilled load of plywood could have been removed during the night or the next morning.
If PennDOT and the state police can't or won't communicate, if they have not worked out a chain of command and better procedures, including the private firms contracted for parkway emergencies, they deserve the harsh criticism they received in the aftermath of Monday's debacle.
If the plan is to reopen the parkways as quickly as possible after an emergency, it should apply under all circumstances.
Other than by e-mailing or writing to the "Getting Around" column, nothing beats an old-fashioned telephone survey by the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation to tell 'em what you think.
Especially if a PennDOT representative calls when you've just walked in the door after 30 minutes crawling through rush-hour congestion and maneuvering through two orange-barrel combat zones where nobody was working.
In 1995, 1997 and late last year, with the help of Penn State University and Diagnostics Plus of State College, PennDOT conducted a QUIK random phone survey of more than 1,100 of its motorist "customers."
The QUIK acronym stands for Quality, Use, Importance and Knowledge of PennDOT services. QUIK has nothing to do with fast, speedy or quick.
"As any business knows, customer-driven quality is the key to success," PennDOT Secretary Bradley L. Mallory said in a news release in November. "This survey is an important tool we use to build quality at PennDOT."
PennDOT estimated people spent an average of 15 to 20 minutes responding to all 24 questions.
Some questions were open-ended, inviting suggestions, ideas and comments from respondents.
(Such as, "If you guys aren't going to clean the drains on bridges, why don't you at least cut the weeds growing out of them?")
Some questions laid out multiple answers, trying to determine, for example, if people noticed efforts to reduce traffic congestion.
(How about, "How many potholes have you hit in the past month? (a) 10 (b) 20 (c) 30 (d) all of the above.")
And some questions asked people to grade PennDOT services, using the letters A, B, C, D and F.
(What grade would you give paint crews for straight lines? Lines over animal carcasses? Any lines at all?)
PennDOT hasn't sent me the results of the last survey. But results of the 1997 survey rated PennDOT's overall performance as B-minus.
State highway maps and welcome centers along interstate highways received the highest grade, a B-plus. Signs, line-painting, snow removal, truck-safety inspections and motor vehicle registration services received a B. And - no surprise here - highway repairs and maintenance were graded C.
Mallory said don't be surprised if you get a call someday asking, "What do you think about PennDOT? Take the time to provide your thoughts."
I suspect that many Pittsburghers would pretty much like to take Mallory up on his offer.
Plate du jour. I spotted this Pennsylvania license plate - SEYA L8R - on an eight-cylinder Corvette driving through the Liberty Tunnels last month. Had she been driving on the Parkway East outbound on Monday afternoon, it would have been much L8R.
Send your transportation questions, complaints and suggestions to Joe Grata c/o The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, or e-mail him at jgrata@post-gazette.com Include your address and phone number, please.
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