A panel of local leaders rolled out a list of ideas Wednesday they said would cut through some of the bureaucratic tangles that afflict the Washington area during major storms, limiting gridlock and frustration. But critics said the committee appointed by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments failed to crack the legal barriers that prevent centralized decision making, dooming the area to traffic snarls and confusion that have accompanied past winters.
The committee was appointed in response to the Jan. 26, 2011, storm that left some commuters stuck in their cars for as long as 12 hours, and facing icy conditions that left some ambulances and firetrucks unable to reach scenes of accidents. That could have been avoided, leaders said earlier this year, if federal, state and local agencies had worked together better.
But policymakers on Wednesday pointed to the U.S. Constitution to show that federal, state and local governments would all have to pass laws and provide funding for a central decision maker to exist. Instead, the panel said, the best that could be done quickly would be to coordinate information flow among governments and to the public.
That left some predicting the past would be repeated.
“It will result in the repetition, in the future, of failure,” COG board member Dave Snyder said. “You are proposing some things that will make the existing flawed model work better. I don’t think this solves the problem.”
The committee recommended that COG create a two-person task force to push out information and coordinate agency conference calls during emergencies, that the region’s new traffic information system work 24/7 instead of just 16 hours for five days a week and that local governments pay to install backup battery power for traffic signals — at a cost of about $12,500 per signal.
“If we don’t have backup power to traffic signals, we will have gridlock, even if we do all the other things right,” committee chairman Phil Andrews of Montgomery County said.
Making those changes would make snowy commutes much easier, Andrews said, but full regional decision making would be too difficult.
“The committee was not persuaded that having a regional authority would be better, and [it] would take a long time to implement,” he said.
D.C. has volunteered to host the two-person task force, which will be funded with federal homeland security grants. And Fairfax County is setting up a website to serve as a clearinghouse for emergency information across the region.
