Hurricane Matthew led way for 2016’s top transport tales
Readers also were interested in how Trump affected traffic.
This past year took me to places I never thought I’d go. The Post sent me, along with Post politics reporter George Bennett, to cover the Republican and Democratic national conventions in July.
I was forced to face my relatively new fear of flying by traveling by plane to those events, and then by going for a ride in the DirecTV airship.
I also faced my first real hurricane threat not just as a reporter but as a homeowner, at a time when my husband and I were moving from one house to the next.
It should come as no surprise that of the many stories I worked on in 2016, the most-read coverage was that of Hurricane Matthew and its effects on our transportation system.
I ’ ve weathered hurr i c a ne s before — I grew up here, and went through Frances, Jeanne and Wilma at my family’s home near Wellington — but Matthew marked several firsts for me: first hurricane as a journalist, first time sleeping in a newsroom, first time having the very adult concerns associated with the potential local landfall of a major storm.
Another on the most-read list: coverage of President-elect Donald Trump and his visits to his Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach.
Here’s a look at 2016’s top transportation stories. 1. Hurricane Matthew The top story: a list of gas stations that can pump gas without power, put together by Post reporter Jeff Ostrowski.
Readers also were interested in keeping track of when tolls on Florida’s Turnpike would be free as evacuations were ordered throughout the state. Our story monitoring loc al road conditions as the storm passed was the third most-popular story, with the fourth being a blog post we updated about every 15 minutes with the latest on flight cancellations and travel waivers issued as the storm approached.
2. FedEx airplane fire at Fort Lauderdale airport
On Oc t . 2 8 , a Fe dEx pl a ne caught on fire after its landing gear collapsed just after it arrived at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.
What made this story so popular is perhaps not just the incident itself, but that it took place within 24 hours of two other high-profile airplane incidents in the U.S.: Republican vice presidential candidate Mike Pence’s plane skidded off the runway at LaGuardia Airport in New York, and an American Airlines flight leaving O’Hare International Airport in Chicago aborted takeoff after its right wing burst into flames.
It also was a prime example of how our readers can be involved in the news process. A key piece of that story was a video of the Fort Lauderdale fire captured and posted to Twitter by a bystander at the airport. 3. Trump in Palm Beach What effects will Trump’s visits have on Palm Beach County? In two post-election holiday trips, the answer was not much. Still, our initial reporting and subsequent stories were among the most-read this year.
A n d o n c e h e i s P r e s i d e n t Trump? Follow our coverage to find out. 4. Road rules Did you know it’s illegal to have your hazard lights on in the rain in Florida?
A short reminder I posted last year was one of my most-read and most-shared stories on social media. 5. Planned work for highways From controversial plans to change the Interstate 95 interchange at Southern Boulevard — along with many of the other I-95 interchanges in the county — to express lanes planned for Florida’s Turnpike, our readers were looking for as much information on major road projects as they could get.
One story that did particularly well: My coverage of a public hearing where fired-up residents sounded off on the plans for the Southern Boulevard interchange. Expect more coverage of that in the coming year as the state moves forward with the project.