Any of you coming home from work via, or near, the I-66 corridor or have family members who are ?
Well, you’re pretty much screwed this afternoon:
Commuters heading west on Interstate 66 should plan for a long drive home. A rally in support of Sen. Barack Obama is being held at the Nissan Pavilion at 6 p.m., and the typically crowded roadway will carry even more traffic.
If you’re heading west towards Gainesville and want to avoid I-66, Joan Morris, spokeswoman for the Virginia Department of Transportation, recommends a couple of alternatives. You can take Route 29 through the Manassas National Battlefield Park or take Route 50 and then head south to get onto I-66 or Route 29.
The road looked normal at 2:30 p.m., half an hour after the pavilion parking lots opened for the rally. The Virginia State Police have been planning for the Obama rally, but the situation is complicated by the storms that tore through the region yesterday.
“With the storms that came through on Wednesday afternoon, that compounds the situation because there are power outages still in Loudon County,” said Corrine Geller, spokeswoman for the state police. “A lot of the intersections do not have power.”
Because of the outages, she said officials are advising people to take alternate routes, adding higher volume to already-packed commuting areas.
Keep dinner warm, cause it’ll be awhile before they get home I’m guessing.
June 6th, 2008 at 5:55 am
Ummm, I kind of hope he schedules one of these every night. Not only was there no traffic jam, there was virtually no traffic at all and I made it home in near record time. I just can’t decide what to ascribe it to, fear of the potential traffic nightmare keeping everyone off the road or the repellant effect of Obama manifesting itself on traffic.