Bill Swedish decided to spend Friday night in a hotel at Baltimore-Washington International Marshall Airport.
Bryant Welch plotted an elaborate course that would allow him to snake from downtown Washington to Greenbelt first thing Saturday.
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They had been warned: At all costs, avoid the Baltimore-Washington Parkway on Saturday morning.
That’s when as many as 2,000 motorcycles were to head north on the roadway, ultimately bound for New York City on their pilgrimage to visit all three sites where victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks died 10 years ago.
When the caravan crossed through Maryland and Northern Virginia on Friday, en route from Shanksville, Pa., to Arlington, they proved that Washington area drivers are an obedient bunch.
Warned of potential traffic insanity as police used rolling road closures to accommodate a parade of bikers, drivers stayed away in droves. Thousands of federal workers took advantage of a chance to work from home or take a vacation day.
“If you look at [Interstate] 66, even for a Friday that’s light,” said Taran L. Hutchinson, pointing to a traffic camera monitor at the Metropolitan Area Transportation Operations Coordination (MATOC) center. “So, I think people got the message.”
All day long, Hutchinson and his team at the MATOC center in Greenbelt monitored progress of the riders as they snaked into Maryland at mid-morning Friday, cutting south toward Virginia.
After lunch in Hagerstown, Md., the departing motorcycles stretched for 12 miles and took 29 minutes to pass as police blocked on-ramps on Interstate 70. The spectacle of the massed bikers headed south, flags flying and their engines at full roar, caused gaper delays on the northbound sides of the medians, but traffic returned to normal after they passed.
Some government officials privately had worried about the traffic impact of the ride, but they were reluctant to voice public criticism because the riders are raising money for scholarships for children of police and fire-rescue workers through the America’s 9/11 Foundation.
Major traffic problems did not materialize Friday because would-be drivers chose other options, including taking a nice summer day off work and heading to their destinations while the procession was still miles away.
The worst had been expected during rush hour as the bikes cruised down the Dulles Toll Road and I-66, but though some drivers were inconvenienced by temporary closures, the feared crush didn’t materialize.
“It actually came through the region much faster and more efficiently than I’d expected,” said John Minisi, who monitors traffic at MATOC.
The bikers are expected to depart the Pentagon shortly before 7 a.m. Saturday. With lighter traffic part of the usual routine then, only drivers who attempt to use Interstate 395 and Interstate 295 to the Baltimore-Washington Parkway during that time should expect to encounter delays.
“The route the riders are taking is exactly the route we take to get to BWI,” said Swedish, who had planned to depart Arlington on Saturday with his wife for a weekend trip to visit their son in Chicago.
Any seasoned Washington driver knows the bail-out routes, and Swedish considered his.
“We thought about 95 to 295, but that’s likely to suffer from the overflow,” he said. “Then we considered a big swing to the east and curving around, but that would take twice as long.”
So, Swedish and his wife booked a hotel room near the airport for Friday night.
For Welch and his mates on the Georgetown University alumni softball team, there were no easy answers.
They were participating along with more than 30 other local teams in a tournament that begins play at 6:30 a.m. Saturday just off the Baltimore-Washington Parkway at the NASA Goddard Softball Complex in Greenbelt. He plotted an alternate route to get there from downtown Washington.
“I’ll take the back roads and weave my way,” Welch said. “There’s been a lot of e-mail banter among the team about how we’re going to get there. I hope everybody makes it on time.”
After the bikers clear Baltimore, they’ll travel north on Interstate 95 into Delaware, lunching and receiving a blessing of the bikes by the Rev. Jerry Howard.
The blessing might come in handy, because next they face the tender mercies of drivers in New Jersey and New York, a group of motorists renowned as less genteel than their neighbors to the south.
On Sunday, the riders plan to finally roll to the World Trade Center site for a wreath-laying and memorial ceremony.
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