We’ve talked before about a neat Web site that should be on your favorites list at home and at work. It’s called TrafficLand.com and, at its core, it aggregates most if not all of the traffic cameras around the region. It also has camera images from a couple dozen states as well as Denmark, New Zealand and the U.K.
After many, many months of planning and developing, TrafficLand has moved to beta stage on a new layout for its site that should make it even easier for newcomers to use.
The cameras that you look at frequently can be sorted and stored on your own home page to make it easy to get a look at the roads and highways you use on a regular basis.
Sometimes seeing things for yourself is more reassuring than waiting for a traffic report to show up on the television or the radio.
Do you remember the line from that Don Henley song that goes: “Out on the road today I saw a Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac; a voice inside my head said ‘Don’t look back, you can never look back’?” That line had to deal with maturity and contradiction. I heard that same voice the other day when I saw a set of “Treasure the Chesapeake” license plates on one of those big Hummer H1 trucks.
Holger writes: “Saw your notice about walking on stopped escalators. There are unfortunately several reasons why this is not a good idea: 1. The steps are much higher than allowed by building code for fixed stairs, leading to fatigue and strain on knees; 2. If you stumble, the hand rail is not good for grabbing, and you will fall on hard metal; 3. Due to the push of people from behind, elderly people cannot stop to breathe (and remember that the flights are usually longer than with fixed stairs).”
While I am not a fan of simply shutting down the escalators to create steps, I think that converting some of the shorter escalators to concrete or marble steps would have some benefits.
Linda writes: “Metrorail drivers continually tell passengers to stand away from the doors, and placards placed by the doors remind riders of this. [Two weeks ago] there was an alleged door-closing problem.
The driver reminded passengers to stand back from the doors, but a Metro employee got on the car and ordered passengers to try and push the doors closed.
“The employee himself made no attempts to solve the problem himself and then ordered everyone off the train.
“I don’t understand Metro’s reasons behind allowing railcars to be so packed with people that the doors are bursting at the seams, and rather than have a Metro employee instruct several passengers to get off to allow the doors to close properly, they unload the entire train.
“Not only is this a poor business practice, but it is very poor customer service.
“It’s a reminder of my grade school days when the teacher punished the entire class for one kid who couldn’t sit still in his seat and be quiet.”
Good point, although you can bet that one of those put off the train would have filed some sort of discrimination suit.
Questions, comments, random musings? Write to [email protected].
