Our favorite Tribune Alert of the year hit the BlackBerry at 6:23 a.m. on Thursday: Lake Shore Drive reopens.
We got there as fast we could.
Smooth! Fairly dry! Nary a snowbound car in sight. Lake Michigan looked forbidding but beautiful as we sped along.
What a relief for commuters, who found the drive open and surprisingly quick for the morning trip.
The reopening of Lake Shore Drive was a symbol of recovery from the city’s most humbling event in the blizzard — the failure to quickly rescue motorists and CTA commuters who were stranded for hours and hours. The scenes on national television of the Lake Shore Drive Auto Cemetery no doubt contributed to the national notion that Chicago was utterly paralyzed by the storm. The scenes no doubt caused a few of the somber calls many Chicagoans got from friends and relatives around the country (“Are you okayyy?) the day after the storm.
We’re glad that most people aren’t playing the blame game for the disaster on the drive, at least not playing it with relish. This was an extraordinary event. In hindsight, it would have been smart to close Lake Shore Drive sooner. But then in hindsight, it would have been smart for everybody in a car or on foot to stay the heck away from the lakefront.
Chicago got the drive open for the morning rush. Untangling the cars and scooping up the snow drifts took work crews 34 hours. The final test of how Chicago handles the blizzard of 2011 is still under way, though. Lake Shore Drive is open, but most Chicagoans don’t live on Lake Shore Drive. They live on Mango Avenue and Malden Street and the hundreds of other side streets, and many of them can’t even dream yet of claiming dibs on their parking spot because a plow hasn’t come along to open the darn street. Aldermen are griping that they don’t have enough plows at their disposal. They’re starting to ask if other neighborhoods are getting more help. There’s an election in 18 days, and a surly voter is not good for incumbency.
There’s the test. The side streets, which are key for small businesses and for ambulances and firetrucks and for restoring the elusive sense that things are getting back to normal.
There are things Chicagoans can and can’t do.
Blunt the fury of a blizzard? Can’t do that.
Clean up? That we can.
