Obama Wins ... Big!
Posted by Chap at 2/12/2008 9:39 PM and is filed under uncategorized 
Well the real news is in today.
Senator Obama just won an absolutely crushing victory in today's Democratic primary. At looks like he will be near a half-million votes out of about 750,000 cast (ed. note: those are numbers at 10 pm, he finishes well above that and the Dem primary votes are over 900,000 -- despite the Beltway shut down in NoVA). He won comfortably in the 11th CD and 10th CD, then absolutely ran the table by a 2-1 or 3-1 margin in Richmond or Tidewater.
His only weak spot was the Ninth CD, southwest Virginia, which stayed loyal to Clinton with a 65% vote. (This is all based on fragmentary SBE data). A visit by President Clinton earlier this week may have saved the day there.
The turnout was the story. The Democratic turnout blew out all expectations. In fact, Hillary Clinton, a distant second to Obama, will beat McCain as the second largest vote-getter today.
I'm kind of busy here in Richmond but will try to make some sort of analysis of these returns (including a look at my local precincts in the 34 Senate District) once I get all the numbers.
Congratulations voters of Virginia.
Dear Senator,
True, we're still pretty jazzed abut turnout and Senator Obama. Truly awe inspiring. But that was far from the "big news" yesterday.
The real big news is that thousands of people were stranded on the beltway because VDOT didn't de-ice a flyover ramp is the big news. but don't take my word for it, it made the CBS national headline news on WTOP.
And I'm sure that in that mess were a few of your constituents. What we gonna do with this?
When freezing rain falls, its a race to get the trucks to salt roadways. Unfortunately, it happened as rushhours was starting and this by itself, delayed road applications. Maybe the news program you saw didn't get into this, but Local News Channel 8 did in good detail. The original forecast was also for a bit warmer temps during the afternoon, with the threat of ice for late in the morning for parts west of the city only. Remember, we are dealing with Mother Nature.
Floodguy,
The huge flyovers are are, in the DC metro are a really new import. They've had them for years in CA. By going vertical, yo get more road in less space, just what we need.
However, Unlike CA, we have harsher, colder winters in VA. When VDOT adopted this technology approach to road construction, I believe they had an obligation to also adopt the correct and appropriate safety and maintenence technology.
Therefore, I strongly believe that given the events of last evening, There was insufficient traing, techniques and materials in order to assure that this roadway would be operational in these conditions.
If this roadway was not intended to be operational under ice conditions, than a method should have been included to close the road such as automatic gates. Since there are no such devices installed, I assume that the road should be considered all-weather.
The engineering and operations management of a critical infrastrucure such as Interstate 95 must rise to meet the demands. While I'm sure that the in the grand scheme of things, the time closed was much less than 0.001 percent, i.e. the road is operational to 99.999 percent of the time, this failure was completely avoidable and
treatable. Furthermore, having such a large quantity of vehicles stopped on I-95 was not only a major inconvenience, it exposed many more people to injury from accident simply because there were more people and vehicles in a smaller area.
Finally, as an engineer, I do not accept "Mother Nature" as an excuse. Nature presents us with challenges to our safety and well being to which we apply creative and practical solutions. When we do not rise to the challenges at hand, it is our own fault. When we assign responsibilty to individuals and agencies to provide safeguards and these requirements are not met, there should be accountability.
BC
Brian:
Thanks for your comments. I don't want to minimize the total disaster on the Beltway yesterday. I don't know the ins and outs but will try to get some better answers from Secy of Transpo or others in authority.
As far as keeping the polls open, I had a long conversation with Mark Rubin of the Gov's office today. Essentially, the Gov does not have authority to unilaterally keep the polls open. The hours are set by law. It would take an act of the legislature to supersede that. Yes, we can discuss changing the law to keep the polls open under various scenarios. The Q would be how to handle that statewide.