DC 911 calltakers have nothing better to do than hear your all-important complaint about being stuck in traffic for a few minutes.
Thanks to a reader for sending this in. A Brookland woman recently reported that the traffic on Michigan Avenue NE in Ward 5 was so burdensome that she just had to call 911 (emphasis added):
from: K [redacted]
to: Brookland@yahoogroups.com
date: Tue, Aug 20, 2013 at 4:10 PM
subject: [Brookland] Gridlocked Brookland trafficI’m hoping that someone in our city government gets the message to start paying attention to traffic patterns after seeing the gridlock nightmare that’s resulted this afternoon — before rush hour even started — from the closing of the Michigan/Monroe intersection.
I called 911 shortly after 3 p.m. when it took me forever to continue northbound on Harewood Road from 4th Street, because Michigan was gridlocked. I hope the city gets some traffic control folks to Brookland to handle today’s rush hour.
Except for someone’s posting to this list in the past week, I never heard any announcement from the city that the Michigan/Monroe intersection would be closing today and traffic would be detoured. Did the city announce this to anyone?
Considering that Michigan and Monroe are major east-west commuter routes into and out of D.C. from Maryland, shouldn’t the city have posted some advance warning signs for commuters to read?
Kathy [redacted]
[redacted] Street NE
UPDATE: A reader forwarded us a message from this morning in which the woman stated, “I don’t think there was anything wrong with me calling 911 yesterday to alert the police…I have no idea if they responded.” We’re willing to bet they had other things to do and are probably well-aware that construction on a major thoroughfare probably creates some traffic delays.