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Playing catch up after the Thanksgiving long weekend. Here is the tally to begin the last month of the year.
Mattresses 126
Ladders 130
Last year in mid December the tally stood at Mattresses 126 and Ladders 112 so we are a bit ahead of mattresses this year and well ahead of ladders.
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This is one of those news stories that made me stop and cheer. It's about time. "A state lawmaker from eastern Missouri is criticizing what he calls the state Department of Transportation’s (MoDOT’s) incompetence, for its handling of the Veterans Day winter storm." State Rep, NIck Schoer of O'Fallon wants MoDOT to examine how other states handle snow, including the chemicals they’re using. Schroer says the agency wasn’t ready for the storm.
If you remember that cold, wet, icy, snowy burst of winter weather during afternoon rush hour, you'll remember how many accidents and hours it took for drivers to get home. Meanwhile, those drivers heading east related that when they finally got into Illinois they found the roads very drive-able. And yet, MoDOT responds to Schoer's comments with all kinds of excuses and talk of how much they did.
I've said the same thing as Rep Schoer for some years. It only takes living in Missouri for a bit to realize MoDOT does not get its roads free of ice and snow like Illinois does and, probably many other states. On this blog I've practically begged MoDOT to go over to the Collinsville IDOT headquarters and learn what they do to the winter roads that Missouri does not.
Here is a post I wrote on just this issue from the past February.
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St. Louis Mayor Krewson is considering bringing back the red light cameras which were eliminated in 2015. She has statistics which show that since the cameras were removed 171 people were killed in roadway accidents. The number of pedestrians killed by cars rose by 54 percent.
We've noticed an uptick in cars running red lights recently. In our area we see this on Clayton road and Big Bend every day. You have to wait after your light turns green to make sure there isn't a car in the other lane direction whose driver stepped on the gas well before the intersection to speed through a light which was turning red. It is totally red before the car completes the intersection. We've seen this enough that waiting a second or two when our light turns green is best for safety.
It's hard to say why so many are zooming through lights that are turning red. It may be that our area and many other St. Louis streets have too many lights. Many streets have stoplights block after block after block and it does become frustrating when the sync is off and you find yourself never getting a string of green lights. I do believe the timing sync should be looked at in many places. For instance, at Clayton Road and Bellevue and Clayton and Demun (our exits from campus) have terrible timing. Clayton Road green lights go on a long time but the exit streets are lucky to get 5 seconds. Seriously. In many parts of the day getting onto Clayton Road across from St. Mary's means sitting through at least 2 series of long red lights as lots of traffic from the hospital stream through.
In any event, there is much more red light running right now and if bringing back those cameras will help, I'm all for it.
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On Saturday night 3 ladders flew off a truck onto 55 near Weber Road. How would you like to have been behind that guy.
Ladders 122
Mattresses 118
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Mattresses 118
Ladders 117
5 mattresses and 6 ladders since the last report
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I have to start with the end of our trip out to Rockville Maryland because it was the weirdest.
Yesterday we leaded for the airport after leaving Katie's house in Rockville Maryland at around 10:30 Eastern time. The drive to Baltimore was fine and the airport check in was fine (we got the A group and pre-check!). We even had a great lunch in the concourse. Baltimore's airport has lots of neat things including good food choices. But then things took a turn we never expected.
After eating we leisurely headed for our gate. We were supposedly on a flight to St. Louis which would leave at 2:10. We looked at the flight board and did not see that flight listed. Then we looked at our boarding pass and saw the flight number was different than what we had on our reservation tickets. But this new number was leaving at 1:30 so we were happy to believe we'd get home earlier.
However. At the gate we immediately saw that this flight was first going to take us to Houston and from there to St. Louis. Neither of us wanted that. It was 3 plus hours to Houston, a wait while people got off and on, and then up to St. Louis. We'd be in that plane for almost 6 hours. So Dale went up to the gate attendant and she tapped a few things into her computer and told him our original flight had been canceled and the check-in people put us on this flight without our knowledge. There was nothing we could do.
So we flew the long ride to Houston, got there around 5 and finally took off for St. Louis where we landed after 8 and home at 9. Our 9 was 10 eastern when we left Katie's so almost 10-12 hours of travel yesterday. We knew St. Louis had had bad weather so we decided when we got off the plane Dale would go straight to the parking area, get our car and pull up to passenger pickup while I got our bags.
We should have known nothing would be easy on this day. The good thing was his car was not covered with ice and snow even though it had sat out in the weather. Meanwhile I pulled my suitcase off the baggage carousel with no problem, but his never appeared. I texted him about this and then waited a bit to see if his was just slow to come out, but no, it never did. So I went to the baggage desk to report this. The two women asked where the bag started out and when I told them Baltimore they asked his name. Then they laughed. It seems his bag got to Lambert 4 hours earlier and was sitting in a lost bag office.
4 hours earlier! That is when we should have gotten to St. Louis if we hadn't been routed through Houston. So the question is: What flight did Dale's bag get on and why weren't we on it too? We don't know and we weren't laughing last night but we sort of are today. But that doesn't mean we don't want answers. My belief is that maybe the original check in people goofed up and put us on the wrong flight. We just don't know. But if our original flight had been canceled, how did Dale's bag get here.
So many hours.
One last thing. I have taken great pride over the years in never ever used the bathroom on a plane. The more years this has gone on the more pride I've taken in this. But yesterday was just too weird and during the stop-over in Houston while we waited for new people to board for St. Louis I just had to use the plane's bathroom. First time in my entire life of plane travel. But at least I didn't have to walk past rows and rows of people to get there. The plane was empty except for about 7 of us who got stuck trying to get to St. Louis via Houston.
Here we are happily eating not knowing what we were in for.
The picture is sideways just like we were yesterday.
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One thing seems for certain, highway and road entities must have lots and lots of money this year. There is constant road work going on both on interstates and local, county, and state roads. In the St. Louis area you can hardly get out of your driveway without quickly coming across some sort of road work. And, what is happening on St. Louis highways is ridiculous. Bridges are closed or mostly closed which leads to backups and time lost for drivers.
This weekend the Poplar Street Bridge had all but one lane closed eastbound and all lanes westbound on the east end. Sure it was the weekend but there is still lots of traffic and a pain in the neck to detour around it. 44 has work messing up traffic near 270 and the King Bridge has been closed going on 3 years. The JB bridge out south, the same. I'm waiting for some highway wiseguy to decide to do something on the only unworked bridge, the Musial. Local streets are often impossible to drive due to whatever work is being done on them.
I guess my point is, there has to be lots of available money. Don't be crying poor all you transportation people when tax time comes.
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Already this morning a mattress fell onto 161 near Frank Scott Highway in Belleville.
Mattresses 113
Ladders 111
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A ladder on SB 55 near Herculaneum.
Mattresses 107
Ladders 109
On top of this there seem to be crashes all over the area during this morning's rush time. Including one deer hit near Troy, Missouri. I'll confess that heading over to Collinsville for church yesterday I drove through extremely thick fog which was especially blinding on the Illinois side. While I carefully watched that I was at least inside my lane lines it suddenly occurred to me that this is the time of year when deer are jumping across highways and roads in early morning and at dusk. That made me head over to the middle lane and have to watch the sides of the road as well as trying to see straight ahead in the fog. I was relieved to get to the Collinsville exit.
Dale's says I'm a bit too paranoid, but following traffic reports as I do rather obsessively, I don't think he's correct. He's hit a deer several times over the years.
The first one he hit was on the country road leading into Venedy where we lived. He had Lizzie in the car with him and she was about 3 or 4 years old. After he got home and settled down a bit from the shock of the deer hit, he decided that was a good evening to read her the book, Bambi.
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