WV Turnpike gets median gates for next blizzard

West Virginia Turnpike authority has taken delivery of four emergency median barrier gates. They will be installed in a mountainous stretch of the Turnpike where interchanges and access are distant. The purchase follows a furore over some hundreds of motorists trapped in their cars for up to 24 hours during the pre-Christmas blizzard and some 40 inches (1m) of snow in ten hours. Traffic was backed up for miles by tractor-trailers jack-knifing on ice and multiple rear-ender collisions.

Rescue efforts were hampered by failure of a key mobile (cell) phone tower, an outage of other emergency comms, plus the inability of police, tow trucks and other rescue services to get through the continuous central concrete median barrier. They were unable to efficiently get to stranded motorists, remove damaged vehicles or turn traffic around.

Despite the many hundreds of motorists stranded by the blizzard crashes, some running out of fuel to keep their cars warm, and great and protracted discomfort from being stuck in backups overnight and much of the next day, there was not a single fatality and not even one serious injury. (From the fuss the local press made you'd have thought it was a local Katrina or Haiti.)

When the weather allows the Turnpike will make four emergency turnarounds with the new gates. Shoulders will also be paved wider to allow tractor-trailers to make the U-turns the next time anything similar happens.

TOLLROADSnews 2010-01-27