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After 40 years, traffic guru Bob Marbourg leaves the WTOP Traffic Center
Hat tip, DCRTV.com mailbag:
/ August 28 Messages /
Dave, Just saw this on the WTOP website. Best wishes to Bob and many thanks for all you've done to help us get through traffic over the years! wtop.com (6/28/19)
Home » Local News » After 40 years, traffic…
After 40 years, traffic guru Bob Marbourg leaves the WTOP Traffic Center
Rick Massimo
August 28, 2019, 4:39 PM
WTOP’s Bob Marbourg (left) and Dave Statter covered traffic during the early ’80s. Back then, it meant taking to the skies. (Courtesy Dave Statter)
“Self-entitled jackasses” of the D.C. area, you can breathe easy: Bob Marbourg has left the WTOP Traffic Center. ... After 40 years, “it is time for me to say goodbye,” the guru of D.C.-area traffic wrote in an email to WTOP staff Wednesday morning.
Marbourg recalled that he got his start at WTOP thanks to a plane crash: WTOP reporter Steve Thompson and pilot Bernard Wicker were in a Cessna that ran out of fuel and landed in a tree in Vienna, Virginia. Both survived, but were seriously hurt. Marbourg got the call from WTOP and “reported from my dining room on a wired landline,” he said. ... For the next 10 years, however, he reported on the traffic, undaunted, from another Cessna: “two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon. That was all there was of rush hour, then!”
“Bob has been a commuter’s best friend almost since the Beltway was built,” said Mike McMearty, WTOP’s director of news and programming. “From answering the phone to get listener tips, to his calling out officials doing road work during rush hours, to calling out motorists as ‘self-entitled jackasses’ for driving the wrong way on the shoulder, Bob has made it his mission to make sure everyone in our area made it to work safely and got home for dinner safely.”
Rush hour is a lot more than two hours in the morning and afternoon nowadays, and that’s just on normal days. Several WTOP reporters and editors said Marbourg shined even more on the days when the unexpected happened. ... Digital Editor Colleen Kelleher immediately remembered an incident where a man stood on the Wilson Bridge, threatening to jump off, on a Wednesday afternoon in November 1998. Traffic all across the region was backed up for 20 miles. ... Marbourg “literally stayed on the air until they cleared it up” after more than six hours. “He was our only source of real news for the people who were stranded that day,” Kelleher said.
....
After 40 years, traffic guru Bob Marbourg leaves the WTOP Traffic Center
Rick Massimo
August 28, 2019, 4:39 PM
WTOP’s Bob Marbourg (left) and Dave Statter covered traffic during the early ’80s. Back then, it meant taking to the skies. (Courtesy Dave Statter)
“Self-entitled jackasses” of the D.C. area, you can breathe easy: Bob Marbourg has left the WTOP Traffic Center. ... After 40 years, “it is time for me to say goodbye,” the guru of D.C.-area traffic wrote in an email to WTOP staff Wednesday morning.
Marbourg recalled that he got his start at WTOP thanks to a plane crash: WTOP reporter Steve Thompson and pilot Bernard Wicker were in a Cessna that ran out of fuel and landed in a tree in Vienna, Virginia. Both survived, but were seriously hurt. Marbourg got the call from WTOP and “reported from my dining room on a wired landline,” he said. ... For the next 10 years, however, he reported on the traffic, undaunted, from another Cessna: “two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon. That was all there was of rush hour, then!”
“Bob has been a commuter’s best friend almost since the Beltway was built,” said Mike McMearty, WTOP’s director of news and programming. “From answering the phone to get listener tips, to his calling out officials doing road work during rush hours, to calling out motorists as ‘self-entitled jackasses’ for driving the wrong way on the shoulder, Bob has made it his mission to make sure everyone in our area made it to work safely and got home for dinner safely.”
Rush hour is a lot more than two hours in the morning and afternoon nowadays, and that’s just on normal days. Several WTOP reporters and editors said Marbourg shined even more on the days when the unexpected happened. ... Digital Editor Colleen Kelleher immediately remembered an incident where a man stood on the Wilson Bridge, threatening to jump off, on a Wednesday afternoon in November 1998. Traffic all across the region was backed up for 20 miles. ... Marbourg “literally stayed on the air until they cleared it up” after more than six hours. “He was our only source of real news for the people who were stranded that day,” Kelleher said.
....
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