It was a chaotic, cold night on area roads.
Weather-related closures, wrecks and traffic jams stall drive times
Houston’s coldest night of 2018 was also its most chaotic on major roads, with police and road crews scattering to and fro as a handful of frozen spots slowed morning commutes for thousands of drivers.
Despite an increase in incidents — Houston police responded to nearly 1,000 accidents between midnight Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon — traffic and police officials said teamwork paid off.
“I was pleasantly surprised we didn’t have what might have been much worse situations,” said Dinah Massie, spokeswoman for Houston TranStar, which monitors traffic along major Houston-area roads.
The most significant shutdown occurred along Interstate 69 near Hillcroft late Tuesday, when police said a jack-knifed tractortrailer and ice closed the freeway, southwest of Loop 610.
“We had two separate patches of icy conditions,” said police spokesman John Cannon — one just past Hillcroft and another about four miles south, at I-69 and Bissonnet. Trapped for hours
With ice behind and in front of them, some drivers got trapped on the highway for hours. No law enforcement officials were directing people off the highway; they simply had to wait in their vehicles from about midnight until the highway reopened after 5 a.m.
Cannon said police were working the scenes at Hillcroft and at Bissonnet — where the ice was being treated — but not directing traffic in the space between.
“You can only devote so many resources to a par- ticular stretch of roadway,” Cannon said. “All in all, there wasn’t anything they could do until that ice set a little bit” and TxDOT could treat the road.
Later, at Chimney Rock, traffic backed up as officials kept the northbound freeway closed, leading to a flurry of motorists driving the wrong way down an entrance ramp. Social media posts promulgated the idea that traffic had broken down, but the wrong-way traffic “wasn’t as chaotic as it might have seemed,” Cannon said.
“That was by design,” he said. “We had officers temporarily block off the freeway feeder road and clear that entrance ramp and allow those drivers to get off the freeway heading down that ramp.” Crews treating roads
The Texas Department of Transportation will assess the incidents and see if there are ways to improve its response on the freeways, spokesman Danny Perez said. The agency said Wednesday it was too early to say if alternatives would have prevented the clogged traffic along the Southwest Freeway.
“The obvious goal was to keep folks safe,” Perez said. “There is always going to be room for improvement.”
In the vast majority of cases, ice was the culprit, including one fatality in which police said a man driving a GMC Sierra spun out on the ice and struck the concrete barrier along Interstate 45 near Dixie Farm Road.
On a typical Tuesday, Houston TranStar logs between 160 and 200 incidents, based on a review of 2017 data. On Jan. 16, the agency logged 312 incidents, most related to ice on area roadways. That tapered off Wednesday, with 143 incidents listed from midnight to 5 p.m.
City, county and Texas Department of Transportation crews spent the past few days preparing roads — particularly bridges and overpasses prone to freezing — with saltwater or a rock aggregate. As temperatures dropped, Perez said crews mixed in magnesium chloride, via a product called MD-20 that is combined with the rock aggregate to speed the deicing of roads.
Crews constantly were treating roads but simply could not catch all of the icy spots to keep all lanes open.
“We all know that there are patches,” Mayor Sylvester Turner said, “and because precipitation was falling up until, like 8-9 o’clock at night, even when you’re going out there and laying the de-icing material down, because the precipitation kept coming, you had to be very cautious because things would ice up again.”
That is why elected leaders sounded the alarm, and alert residents opted to stay put.
“Maybe it is a result of Hurricane Harvey, people are willing to listen to leaders who tell them to heed the call,” Massie said. ‘Driving way too fast’
Many of those who did hit the road found themselves sliding around. Others, such as truck driver Gabe Aguilar, made their way — albeit slowly.
Aguilar, who was hoping to return to his Oklahoma home after dropping off some lumber Tuesday night, instead spent some extra time in Houston. He hoped to leave Thursday, he said.
Multiple 18-wheelers wrecked or jack-knifed on icy Houston-area highways, and Aguilar knew he needed to be careful. He has plenty of experience driving in ice and snow, but he knows most Texas drivers do not.
“I know a lot of the issue is people get out and they’re driving way too fast,” he said. And many people on the road do not realize truck drivers don’t have much leeway in icy conditions.
“A lot of people just don’t understand,” he said. “You’re in a semi, that’s 80,000 pounds. You can’t stop (quickly).”