Governor Deval Patrick’s strict travel ban Friday stunned pizza deliverers and police chiefs alike, shuttering shops, befuddling taxi drivers, and leaving police officers wondering if they had to ticket drivers dashing to the store for a gallon of milk.
Some criticized the governor for his last-minute edict and the stiff penalties it carried — up to a year in jail and a $500 fine to any nonemergency personnel on the road after 4 p.m. — while others doubted that storm-swamped police would have time to enforce the ban.
Comments
Given the almost 100% confidence of what was forecast and what has happened, it was the wise thing to do.
A short-term executive order that says "go home" is often the only way to convince employers to shut down.
The idea that such an order is bad because it will distract police from their mission is non-sense, a straw-man argument. The order helps police because all they have to do if they need someone to go home is say, "Did you know that it's an emergency and it's illegal to be driving around? Go home."
Gotta love that Kenny guy - his freedom must be being infringed! It gives the cops discretion to get morons off the raod, and makes the more greedy business types at least think about sending workers home!
Additionally--gotta love libertarians who don't want Gov to spend money, um, ever. So, try to guess how much money MA (and the Feds) had to use in '78 to rescue ALL the people on the highways because Dukakis didn't have the resources/technology to make the same ban back then. Think about how much money Patrick just saved the people of MA by not having to rescue anyone off the streets or tow away overturned tractor trailers that littered the road in '78. Now the money can be spent on plowing, as it should be. Kenny is what, 21 yrs old? He's got a lot of living to do still..and learning.
You can't blame the kid from Fitchburg for not understanding--he probably hasn't lived through one of these storms and doesn't know how bad it can get with cars on the road.
In the storrm of 1978 it began on Rt. 128 with a few cars spinning out which resulted in other cars and trucks hitting their brakes and skidding into other cars, and several trucks jack-knifeing. Pretty soon the whole road came to a standstill and the plows that had made it on to the highway were stuck as well, as the heavy snow continued to fall. Thousands were stranded and had to rescued by the police and national guard.
By the way, microcosms of Rt. 128 were happening on the streets of Boston and even smaller towns.
So I applaud Governor Patrick for making a tough decision.
If it made sense to get people off the roads yesterday afternoon, to continue the ban past noon today would be petty tyranny. The governor has no way of knowing what is safe town by town and city by city. He doesn't know whether it is safe for me to get in my car and drive to a restaurant in the next town, or to the grocery store for a quart of milk. Who is he to put all sorts of businesses, like that pizza place, out of operation for a day? Will he pay for their lost income? Don't be a tin-hat dictator, Deval Patrick. Lift the travel ban now.
To the commenter who claimed that Gov. Patrick has no way of knowing what ius safe town by town, city by city, I have a reply. First, he does indeed have the ability to get a reasonably good picture of conditions through state agencies to whose officers he has direct access, such as the State Police, the Department of Transportation, to name just two. These agencies and officials can and do keep him informed of the state of snow removal and power outages locally and regionally. Secondly, driving is a regional matter, going beyond one's iommediate neighborhood: Much, if not most, automobile travel is for distances of more than a mile or two, and given that there is still a good deal of snow clearance to be done around the area that will be done much more quickly and effectively if they don't have to contend with slaloming private vehicles and traffic accidents. It's regrettable that the pizza place lost a day of business, but it IS an emergency, and the costs to businesses and families in accidents, unrelieved power outages, and prolonged business reductions would be far greater if the governor did not get non-emergency traffic off the streets. By the way, in declared emergencies--and, by almost every definition, this blizzard qualifies as an emergency situation--governmental chief executives have the power to take extraordinary measures from route closures to martial law, depending on the gravity of the situation to ensure general public safety. In emergencies it is the governor's duty to take the apopropriate measures, and taking such measures at such times does not make a "tin-hat dictator. One might quibble over the length of the driving ban, but, given the access of the governor to statewide feedback from emergency services, I would guess thathe would be better qualified than most of us to make that determination. It's hard to imagine that anyone, even a Massachusetts pol, would get some kind of power rush from needlessly extending a ban on non-emergency traffic, especially someone who was probably up all night dealing with the crisis.
And here's why it was a smart idea. Cuomo didn't ban travel, so employers in NY felt free to require their employees to stay. And then they got stuck. http://www.chron.com/news/us/article/New-Yorkers-tell-of-hours-stranded-on-snowy-roads-4265557.php