TOWN AND COUNTRY, Mo. – State-of-the-art video road monitoring inside MoDOT’s Transportation Management Center gives them eyes all across the region. After this winter storm, all they had to do was look outside.
From the back of their building on Highway 141 at Interstate 64, you could see cars getting stuck on the highway, as well as the eastbound on-ramp to the interstate. Several cars throughout the morning needed to be pulled off the on-ramp, especially as the stretch appeared thick with slow and unplowed for most of the morning.
“On 141, you’re lucky to find some tracks at all,” Bob Forister said. Forister, his wife, and their kids drove about 20 miles to check on a loved one.
“In Eureka, where we live, they were all right, but when we got on 141, they were not as good,” Logan Forister said. “Not as plowed.”
Problems were everywhere, and not always in predictable places.
Snowplows were blocked on Page near I-170 by a car stuck in the snow. MoDOT workers got out to push it free, along with an Overland police officer.
That was just the beginning of problems on Page Avenue, where we found two stuck tractor trailers and a third further down Page. On almost every block, you’d find a car stuck.
Commuter Justin Middleton was one of the lucky ones who didn’t get stuck.
“So far, I’ve only seen one snowplow that was out on the highways actually plowing,” he said. “One or two that were driving with their blades up. Everywhere else, it’s basically these private lots and businesses.”
You’d be lucky to see even one lane on an interstate. If you tried to switch lanes, you risked getting stuck, like a Jeep we found spinning its wheels in the transition lane between eastbound I-64 and north I-170.
The roads did get better in many places throughout the day. We watched the intersection of Woods Mill and Clayton roads go from very bad to very good within a matter of 30 minutes over the lunch hour. In some spots, the plowing and the salt seemed to be taking better than other places.