LI Local cops, NY State cops, and Lots of broken poles / lines down / closed roads

So I have 2 drops and one pickup on Long Island today.

Local cops have blocked off roads due to dark signals / downed trees / poles / power lines. All fine, well and good, but those roads are the only truck routes to my deliveries. Spent an hour trying to find a legal route in. Other routes are posted 2 ton limit, 5 ton limit. After talking to a local food service driver, I decided to use the 2 ton limit road. Passed a local cop on the way in, he never even blinked.

On the way out, I had the same problem trying to get on the LIE - but this time, I ran across intersections with dark traffic signals. For unknown reasons, there was a traffic cop posted at each dark intersection, sitting in his car, and denying left turns across traffic. I drove 3 miles looking for a way on to the LIE, and each entry required a left turn which was blocked by the traffic cop. When I got fed up with driving around, I shut it down in the middle of an intersection where a local cop was sitting, and asked the cop how to get to the LIE. He pointed in the direction that he was blocking. I gave him a 10 second blank stare. Then I asked him how I was supposed to get there since he had it blocked, make a U-turn across 4 lanes of traffic and the median? "Yup" he said. (!) Sooo.. what about the traffic? "They'll just have to deal with it". Ooooookay! I proceeded to the right side of the road, swung through the median to the other side, stopped, backed up so I didn't run up on the sidewalk, then completed the u-turn, and turned onto the road that I needed be on. Seems to me that it would have been safer and easier to move his car and the cones that were blocking the intersection so that I could just make the left...

So after I made that turn, I had one more left to make to get on the LIE. And THAT was blocked by 2 NY State cops in an SUV. I shut it down in the intersection again, and asked them how I was supposed to get on the highway. "Well, we've been running traffic through that 7-11 parking lot over there..." Nope, I'm not making a U-turn in a 7-11 parking lot with a 53" trailer and the lousy turn radius of my Pete. They thought about it, decided that indeed it was not a good idea, then proceeded to move their vehicle and the Schneider eggs that were blocking me.

WHY, if there were cops posted at the intersections, were they not actually directing traffic and allowing left hand turns?

Craziness!

 

Honestly, the folks on the ground were helpful when asked. They were simply doing what they were told, and that was to prevent left hand turns at 'dark' intersections in the interest of safety. They're not allowed to think for themselves or make suggestions about possible improvements. That's for the politicians to decide, and I understand that. I simply tried to work within the system until it became obvious that nobody realized that the system wasn't working. Too many cooks in the kitchen, and no bottom-to-top communication.

Each of those cops saw things working as they should from their perspective, but nobody was privy to the 'big picture'. Nobody was evaluating the system, and I assume that since everything appeared to be working, there was no 'problem' to feed back up the chain for resolution. Poor planning.