Paralysis: Rail, airlines began canceling early

By rail, road or air, the story for travelers was pretty much the same as Tuesday’s storm arrived — a preparation for paralysis.

Metra’s Ogilvie Transportation Center in downtown Chicago became packed early Tuesday afternoon as thousands of suburban commuters packed the station and crowded onto outbound trains. Metra had put in place its “early quit” plan to provide more trains earlier in the afternoon than would normally run at rush hour and was running trains out of the station as soon as they filled up.

Six of the system’s lines were affected, and Metra officials urged riders to visit metrarail.com throughout the storm to see the new weather schedules.

On the roads, Illinois Department of Transportation officials deployed a full battalion of snowplows and salt trucks in the six-county metropolitan region at 2 p.m. Two sets of teams working 12-hour shifts in 365 vehicles make up the IDOT deployment in Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake, McHenry and Will counties.

IDOT officials said the majority of the operations will be solely snow removal until the snow stops today. Trucks will lay down salt on the roads once the snowfall winds down.

Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn activated more than 500 state National Guard troops to be ready to assist any stranded motorists.

Illinois Tollway officials said they’ve mobilized the agency’s full complement of 183 snowplows to tackle plowing operations on the tollway system. The agency also canceled all construction lane closures until Friday morning.

Pace officials said the suburban bus system would operate on “as normal a schedule” as possible, but they urged riders to check arrival times and other weather-related alerts at pacebus.com. Pace officials hoped to provide updates at least once an hour on the website.

Almost all air traffic was canceled.

Midway Airport suspended operations for the day at about 1:30 p.m. Chicago Aviation Department officials said more than 1,300 flights had been pre-emptively canceled at O’Hare. And, the airlines operating out of O’Hare announced they will have limited or no operations today, aviation department officials said.

American Airlines officials announced plans to suspend operations at O’Hare International Airport at 4 p.m. Tuesday and didn’t expect to resume until noon today at the earliest.

Ed Martelle, a spokesman for the Dallas-based airline, said some 400 flights in and out of O’Hare were scrapped because of the blizzard.

He urged travelers to check the American Airlines website aa.com for information on rescheduling flights.