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Yesterday's Caltrans-induced traffic jam on Interstate 10 coming back in from Palm Springs was so bad that at least one group of music industry types headed to the Grammy Awards hired a plane in Thermal and flew to Santa Monica Airport. This according to Denise Wilson, president and founder of Desert Jet, quoted in Banning-Beaumont Patch.
Other people trying to get to Los Angeles, Orange County and other destinations spent four to six hours covering what normally takes 45 minutes or less, and others decided to spend the night in the Coachella Valley rather than fight the traffic."We actually had four groups of people going to the Grammys who called us at the last minute because of the Interstate 10 mess," Wilson said in a prepared statement. "We only had one aircraft available at the time because we were flying clients to other locations in our other aircraft."
Caltrans on Monday said the agency "extends their apologies to the motoring public for the lengthy traffic delays that were encountered on westbound Interstate 10 in the Eastern Desert on Sunday, February 12." A glitch at a concrete batch plant in the Cabazon area was blamed for the lane closures in Banning, in the San Gorgonio Pass between the desert and the Inland Empire.
Sunday night on LA Observed:
The long, long winding road home from Palm Springs
Photo: Guy McCarthy/Banning-Beaumont Patch