Battered by blizzard, turnpike officials pledge changes

HARRISBURG - Weeks after a snowstorm trapped hundreds of trucks, buses, and cars on an 11-mile stretch for a day, Pennsylvania Turnpike officials said Wednesday they would start testing removable median barriers that might prevent such bottlenecks in the future.

In the first legislative hearing on the debacle, turnpike and state police officials insisted they did their best in responding to the ferocious storm that battered the state and paralyzed roads on Jan. 22 and 23.

But they said they had limited options to remove vehicles and drivers buried by snow and hemmed in by the permanent concrete medians that divide the turnpike in a stretch with no exits between Bedford and Somerset.

"No motorist should have to endure that on any Pennsylvania road - especially a road that you pay for," Turnpike Commission Chairman Sean Logan told the House Transportation Committee.

The hearing - the first of two scheduled in the Capitol this month - came amid a review that has also included fact-finding meetings with senior turnpike managers, maintenance crews, and Pennsylvania Department of Transportation officials, as well as questionnaires sent to dozens of agencies that had a role in the emergency response, Logan said.

A full report will be issued after the investigation ends in March.

Sixty tour buses, 100 passenger cars, and 400 commercial vehicles were trapped overnight when the storm, which had been forecast for days, pummeled central Pennsylvania with record snowfall.

Still, turnpike officials said they were caught by surprise by the blizzard's earlier-than-expected arrival and its potency. They had planned a midnight ban on certain trucks, and intended to keep the 550-mile tolled highway system open with reduced speed limits.

But by the time the ban was to take hold, it was too late to be effective. The storm was bearing down, and "the trucks were [already] on the road," said Craig R. Shuey, the turnpike's chief operating officer. And it was compounded by an accident earlier in the day that had created a five-mile slowdown.

Snow then fell at up to two inches per hour - a rate that eventually dumped more than 35 inches in Somerset - and state police issued the order that motorists "shelter in place" on the highway.

That meant emergency officials would not immediately prioritize removing vehicles through the few emergency access roads along the 40-mile stretch.

Diverting drivers through those treacherous exits was deemed unworkable and dangerous, said State Police Maj. Edward Hoke, who oversees the agency's patrol division. Those few passages led to unpaved wetlands or snow-packed rural roads where motorists surely would have found themselves in worse trouble, he said.

The backup was the third such wintry logjam on a major state highway in nine years.

After a 2007 mess left motorists stranded for 24 hours along I-78 near Allentown, PennDot installed removable median barriers on that road.

Turnpike officials considered such a step two years ago, in the wake of a Senate hearing about the response to a storm that left motorists stranded for about eight hours near Willow Grove.

But they rejected the idea because of safety concerns, commission Chief Executive Mark Compton said late last month.

They have since reconsidered.

On Thursday, Compton told lawmakers the commission would install and test removable barriers on the upper end of the Northeast Extension, which stretches from near Norristown to Clarks Summit.

Led by Rep. John Taylor, the Northeast Philadelphia Republican who chairs the committee, lawmakers asked questions in a nonconfrontational tone, and underscored that their aim was not to level blame but to understand why drivers were stuck for so long.

"Why couldn't they get off more easily?" Taylor asked.

Forbidding road conditions were a main reason, Shuey explained.

"You have to be as ready to send a Beetle with bald tires off [the roadway] as a tractor-trailer and an SUV," Shuey said.

It wasn't until 5 p.m. Saturday, after eastbound lanes had also been shut down, that officials began the difficult task of removing some of the concrete medians, each weighing 6,000 to 8,000 pounds, to uncork the backup, State Police Capt. David Cain said.

A second hearing on the topic is scheduled for next week in the Senate.

Logan, the Turnpike Commission chairman, wasn't shy about accepting blame.

"Our team recognizes that we need to be held accountable for our management of this emergency," he said of the quasi-private entity that owns and controls the toll road. "We made every effort to keep our motorists safe. ... We can do more."

mpanaritis@phillynews.com

215-854-2431@Panaritism