My commute is usually 13 miles, taking about 45 minutes. Yesterday, it was 30 miles, and an hour and a half.
Someone spotted a “suspicious package” near the bridge into D.C., and the police shut it down. There are 6 bridges crossing the Potomac river from Virginia, and the huge amount of traffic began to find it’s way to them. The backup from the river stretched for about 20 miles, with at least a hundred thousand persons stuck in their cars unable to move. There was also a “package” found in the subway, which was shut down.
It seems to me that if a terrorist – or mischief-maker – wanted to disrupt the Nation’s Capital, he could just drive around with a pickup truck full of empty boxes, and set them down on street corners every once in a while. Preferably at a point where a 4 lane interstate suddenly narrows down to a 2 lane city street at the end of a bridge that millions of people use to commute every day. Not a single life lost, but plenty of economic and psychological damage.
