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Health & Fitness

GWB Information Gap

It would be hard for anyone who gets up in the morning, puts on his pants like anyone else and reads the newspaper not to know the essential facts about the closure of access lanes in Fort Lee at the George Washington Bridge.  Sorting through the true information and the false information is difficult because so many people have talked about it, written about it and made jokes about it.

The first level of the information gap is code navy.  Bruce Springsteen did a song on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon about Governor Christie’s alleged political stance.  It begins, “In the day we sweat it out on the streets stuck in traffic on the GWB.”  Many people think the traffic jam began in Fort Lee and ended up on the bridge.  No, closing 3 toll booths to the George Washington Bridge meant that fewer cars got onto it.  Therefore, the vast majority of motorists driving from New Jersey to New York, many of whom were the only one in the car, actually had less traffic.

The second level of the information gap is code navy heather.  On February 4, Tom Feeney, the Media Contact person for the New Jersey Turnpike, responded to a question about why a Fort Lee ambulance would cross the bridge to New York, “The GWB is not a Turnpike Authority bridge, and the Turnpike Authority has no jurisdiction over the local streets in Fort Lee.  The lanes that were closed connect the local streets directly to the GWB, not to the Turnpike. This incident didn’t cause any unusual delays on our roadway.  I’m afraid I can’t shed any light on the ambulance issue for you.”

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Englewood Hospital, Holy Name Hospital and First Med of New Jersey have emergency rooms and they are within about 3 miles of the Fort Lee entrance to the George Washington Bridge.  It seems fitting that the volunteer drivers of the Fort Lee Ambulance Corps would transport people from Fort Lee to local hospitals instead of going across the George Washington Bridge to New York Presbyterian.

Google Maps has a very practical map of the Turnpike and Fort Lee New Jersey.  The satellite picture displayed on February 5, 2014 shows 6 access lanes to the bridge.  It is on the Palisades Interstate Parkway which is parallel to the Hudson River along the northern border of Fort Lee.  Even in that picture, when all 6 lanes are open, the traffic is backed up.

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A traffic jam on the bridge could theoretically cause a traffic jam on the Turnpike.  However Feeney’s statement is code navy heather because the Fort Lee access lanes do not go onto the Turnpike, they go onto the bridge.  The answer still makes sense because the traffic jam began at the access lanes, went down the Palisades Parkway and into Fort Lee at Hudson Terrace.  Therefore fewer cars entered the George Washington Bridge.

On February 4, Kate Zernike, a specialist on the scandal responded to the question about why an ambulance would cross the bridge.  Zernike wrote in an email, “Understand that the lane closures were on access lanes leading from Fort Lee onto the toll plaza. When those lanes got shut down, Fort Lee got jammed. So it's not that ambulances couldn't get across the bridge, it's that they couldn't get across town.” 

The Fort Lee Volunteer Ambulance Corps is located downtown about a thousand feet to the south side of the G.W.B.  According the Fort Lee Volunteer Ambulance Corps website, they have 3 ambulances.  In 2004, they answered 3300 calls, about 9 a day.  Three toll booths were closed from September 9 to September 13.  If the Ambulance Corps received the same number of calls on average in 2013; and if the traffic jam in Fort Lee was 24 hours a day, then about 36 ambulances could have been delayed.

Residents of many New Jersey towns, especially ones with a highway through them, experience the dangerous reality of daily traffic jams.  They are a real problem, contributing to a high number of accidents in the state.  They are nothing to joke about or to use for political payback.  The third level of the information gap is code indigo.  If Port Authority officials closed toll booths with the intent to cause a traffic jam, without realizing that they would jeopardize the safe travel of ambulances, then they made the mistake of the indigo level of the information gap.

Contact me:  tedw.patch@aol.com

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