I-95 is blocked near Newark due to a police-involved shooting. Looks like a nightmare to travel on any of the alternate routes.
https://www.wdel.com/news/shooting-closes-i-95/article_c295d8f0-724a-11ed-bfb5-9b118e7948f3.html
The guy involved carjacked multiple people, including a friend of mine's mother, starting in Newport before working his way onto 95, reportedly going the wrong direction on the interstate at some point. Apparently the police had were firing on the suspect from a helicopter once they had him pinned down. Wild day, luckily it seems like no one else was seriously hurt.
Downtown Newark has been a nightmare all day with all the trucks from Maryland trying to squeeze down Delaware Avenue.
Knowing that the police have an investigation on their hands, it's amazing other troops or agencies aren't handling traffic. I witnessed traffic on cameras trying to make left turns around vehicles stopped in the intersection (and cross traffic trying to do the same at the same time). At least it appears the truck restriction on 4/896 is being waived.
Someone from DelDOT showed up to manually control the light at SR 896 / Amstel Avenue around 1pm, though that light wasn't nearly as much of a problem for traffic as all the lights on Delaware Avenue are. I didn't walk down Delaware Avenue though so I'm not sure if anyone's controlling the lights to free up the bottleneck through town there.
EDIT
As the afternoon / evening rush starts to pick up with the interstate still closed, it looks like most of the traffic is being shunted away from Newark and forced onto SR 4, which isn't making for a good time. Backups are approaching 50 minutes long from 273 to 896.
This story has been updated to seemingly reveal very little of the chase actually occurred on 95. Old Cooch's Road sits just off of the 95/896 interchange (
https://goo.gl/maps/46C1ifVYtyGkTYY28 ), and the woods are only about 75 feet between there and 95. The suspect appears to have managed to carjack a vehicle on 95, but the pursuit only lasted less than a mile on 95 itself.
As far as police controlling intersections: That's basically a relic from a bygone era when roads were smaller and intersections were easier to control. Today, and especially in Delaware, they have wide roads with traffic lights that can adjust to traffic conditions, and overridden by controllers in HQ. The intersection where someone may have been manually controlling traffic may not have had this capability or the link was down. With these wide intersections, you need two officers, and they're not really going to be able to do much that the light can't do. Maybe a few key intersections can benefit, especially the downstream lights that may be holding up much of the traffic, but otherwise the police still have their day-to-day stuff they have to handle and respond to, and trying to deal with numerous intersection control takes away from those duties.
The biggest benefit would be to reduce/prevent traffic from gridlocking an intersection as you mentioned, but traffic tends to weave their way around cars. In law enforcement's view, drivers figure out their own way to make it work.
Don't forget, Delaware also road dieted Main St (which becomes Elkton Road and DE/MD 279) over the years. Great for pedestrian safety. Not great when you have to close a major interstate. Even if the intersections are controlled, traffic is still limited by the short distance of a single lane on this road.
Most often, you'll see officers controlling traffic at stadium events. Most of the time, they are on overtime shifts paid by the team or entity, not regular duty, so they're not taken away from the normal demands of the local police departments. There tends to be two factors that go into putting officers at intersections: Pedestrians and traffic restrictions. When there's areas near arenas that see a large number of pedestrians (ie: crossing the street from parking lots), the officers are there mostly to assist with them. Also, if there's a road or parking lot where traffic is restricted, you tend to see officers at those intersections as well.
As far as the trucks on Route 4: It would look really bad for the police to not control intersections, but then pull trucks over on Route 4 for an issue well beyond their control. And even then, if there's a hundred trucks ignore the restriction per hour, putting 2 cops out there only means you're going to pull over 4 or so of these trucks an hour. The route is safe for trucks; there's no weight or size limitations. It's just to prevent trucks from going around the tolls en masse. Forcing trucks off Route 4 mainly will entail pushing them into the University of Delaware area, making matters much worse for traffic there. Overall, just let the trucks be. Worry about enforcement another day.
And frankly, you also tend to see the difference here between a major city that deals with shootings on a regular basis, and a police department that doesn't. City police departments don't generally keep a major interstate closed for 9+ hours with an investigation. In fact, you gotta kinda wonder what the DSP was still investigating at that point.
The loss of toll revenue is a great point; that's not something they can recoup. When the Delaware Memorial Bridge was closed a number of years ago due to an issue with a nearby chemical plant, that plant ultimately did reimburse the DRBA for the estimated loss of tolls. Not gonna happen with this incident.