Flight Cancellations, Car Crashes And Wishful Thinking: Your Afternoon Post-Blizzard Roundup

By Chuck Sudo in News on Feb 2, 2015 9:45PM

Photo credit: Paul Callan

We're heading into the day's home stretch and, as of post time, the side streets around Chicagoist's Bridgeport headquarters are still needing attention, which we're sure is the norm across the city. At least we weren't on I-294 this morning, where black ice on the road resulted in a crash involving dozens of cars.

The crash occurred near mile marker 18 in Hickory Hills when a driver struck a state police vehicle. The crash ultimately shut down three of the four southbound lanes. As of post time, the expressway has re-opened but crews are still working to melt that ice, so plan accordingly if you're taking I-294 home.

At O'Hare and Midway, things are all sorts of messed up.

That's a reminder to check with whatever airline you're flying with, if you're traveling, to see if your flight is canceled.

CTA and Metra have their fingers crossed that the evening commute is not a repeat of the delays and cancellations that happened this morning. Metra, in particular, wasn't the way to really fly this morning with eight cancellations (six of them on the UP North Line) and delays on other lines of up to an hour.

Finally, we have an update to our morning post about side street snow removal. A Streets and San spokeswoman reminded Chicagoist that the department does not plow alleys, but that they do monitor them to see if standard traffic through alleys helps to tamper down the accumulation. If there are some alleys that are still unpassable, Streets and San does have the equipment to clear an alley and will do so on a case-by-case basis.