Thursday, January 14, 2010

Watch Out For Water And Elk On Roadway

If you drive in rural areas, you may encounter a new obstacle while driving; standing water. A flood advisory remains in effect across much of the Inland Northwest after rain left pools of water in fields and along low-lying roads. Here's my legal disclaimer: that picture isn't of an actual event in our area, it was taken off the internet for the purpose of humor.

I was out in the Newman Lake area this morning and there are places where water is starting to creep over the road, and more rain is expected this weekend. Another thing I saw in that area this morning was a huge herd of elk standing on the railroad tracks trying to cross Trent. Semis and other cars were barreling by in both directions at 60 miles an hour and I was scared a train would come along and scare the elk into entering traffic. I called the Spokane Regional Transportation Management Center, who reported it to the State Patrol, whom I saw headed that way just a few minutes later, but I don't know what happened after that. I tried to take a picture but was afraid that would also cause a traffic 'incident.'

No comments:


About SRTC

SRTC is the federally designated Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) for Spokane County. Urbanized areas with populations exceeding 50,000 people are required to have an MPO. SRTC was formed to address the county's transportation planning needs. It provides coordination in planning between the public, cities, small towns, the county, the state, transit providers, and tribes.

SRTC offers services including transportation monitoring, transportation modeling, census information analysis, travel demand forecasting, historical traffic count analysis, geographic information systems, and trip generation rates.