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Mid-March snow makes for slippery sidewalks, altered bus routes

March 12, 2014

When he woke up Wednesday morning, he realized how wrong he was.

As an international student from the Dominican Republic, Romerogomez despises the snow and is continuously looking forward to warmer weather.

Romerogomez was late for his first class because of a delayed CATA bus.

“I was hoping that it would just get warmer from now on and I was really disappointed when I saw all the snow falling,” he said. “We don’t even dream about snow there. It never falls.”

According to the Weather Channel, about 4.6 inches fell in East Lansing Tuesday night and Wednesday morning.

It was a jarring contrast to the almost balmy weather of the days prior.

The immense snowfall dumped on East Lansing in the middle of March led to a number of problems for commuters throughout East Lansing because of altered bus routes and unplowed roads and sidewalks.

National Weather Service meteorologist William Marino predicted temperatures would be around five degrees below zero by sunrise Thursday, but said no more snow is expected.

Afternoon temperatures for Thursday could rise to the upper 20s.

CATA Marketing Director Laurie Robison said several bus routes were changed to avoid spots of accumulated snow and ice that had not yet been removed by the municipalities.

CATA was forced to alter routes to ensure passenger and public safety, Robison said.

Routes 2, 7, 8, 10, 11, 13, 20, 24 and 26 were altered Wednesday due to the road conditions.

These routes are often detoured after a large snowfall or ice storm, Robison said.

“We have areas that typically are not cleared very early that cause problems for us in terms of our buses being able to pass safely without getting stuck or causing problems,” Robison said. “Those typically are not your main arteries-they are more neighborhood areas so we will avoid those sections.”

Journalism sophomore Hannah Watts slipped and fell on an unplowed sidewalk near IM Sports West and bruised her s houlder.

“I just had to fall on, hopefully, one of the last snowstorms for this winter,” she said.

CATA bus route change updates and alerts can be found on www.cata.org and on CATA’s Facebook and Twitter pages.

Customers are encouraged to subscribe to Rider Alerts to receive text messages or emails about CATA updates.

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