{"id":1377,"date":"2005-01-04T11:31:09","date_gmt":"2005-01-04T16:31:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wordpress\/2005\/01\/tdot_helps_motorists\/"},"modified":"2005-01-04T11:31:09","modified_gmt":"2005-01-04T16:31:09","slug":"tdot_helps_motorists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2005\/01\/tdot_helps_motorists\/","title":{"rendered":"TDOT “HELPs” Motorists"},"content":{"rendered":"

TDOT to the rescue<\/a>:<\/p>\n

A Tennessee Department of Transportation program in the state’s largest cities to provide roadside assistance to accidents and breakdowns is helping ease traffic congestion and improve safety, officials say.
\nThe program, called HELP, came to the aid of more than 92,500 motorists during the fiscal year that ended July 1, according to a recent annual report. That was up 9 percent from the previous year, TDOT spokeswoman Kim Keelor said.
\n. . .
\nThe program costs $5.1 million a year, making the average cost of each HELP stop about $55, the report shows. HELP truck operators in Chattanooga, Knoxville, Memphis and Nashville offered assistance ranging from boosting batteries to transporting stranded motorists to rounding up cattle that escaped from a livestock truck.
\nThe distinctive neon-green HELP trucks operate on assigned routes in the core areas of each city. The program strives to clear an accident or breakdown site quickly, because national statistics show as many as 20 percent of collisions on interstates and other controlled-access highways result from an earlier incident still congesting traffic.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A good program, I think. But one I’ll hopefully never have to use. It never ceases to amaze me how much traffic can slow down around here merely because there’s a vehicle sitting harmlessly on the road’s shoulder.
\nSpeaking of easing traffic congestion, whose bright idea was it to shut down two lanes on Kingston Pike<\/a> for a long, long time? Sheesh.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TDOT to the rescue: A Tennessee Department of Transportation program in the state’s largest cities to provide roadside assistance to accidents and breakdowns is helping ease traffic congestion and improve safety, officials say. The program, called HELP, came to the aid of more than 92,500 motorists during the fiscal year that ended July 1, according […]<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1377","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"h-entry","8":"hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1377\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}