Guardian Angel of the Highways

This week I’m taking a short break for some summer fun, so let’s revisit a column I wrote over two years ago…

Tom Kaminski is like an all-knowing guardian angel hovering in the heavens, protecting motorists in the tri-state area from traffic accidents.

Kaminski has been a traffic reporter for radio station WCBS 880 for 34 years. He leads a team of producers, spotters and tipsters who report on traffic and public transit from his vantage point 1,500 feet above the city in the station’s Bell 206 helicopter.

Most of the time he’s in the helicopter, but always with a pilot (Tom is always just a passenger) and, more recently, a cameraman for his twice-hourly updates for PIX-11 TV. Six times an hour (“on the 8s”) from 5:30 to 9 a.m. and again from 4:30 to 7 p.m., his live traffic reports on WCBS 880 help thousands of travelers on their way to and from work.

“Rush hour in Connecticut is never really over,” he tells me. So even when he’s not flying, the station is still staffed with traffic reporters. “Fairfield County is a huge audience for us,” says WCBS News Director Tim Scheld.

Afternoon construction on I-95 or the Merritt Parkway can turn even off-peak hours into a traffic jam, so WCBS’s traffic reports are a must-listen when I’m out and about. And for train commuters, Kaminski and his team have a direct line to Metro-North, where they check Twitter for tips on transit delays.

“I want our listeners to think, ‘This guy has my back,’ so I’m always available if circumstances require special reports,” says the 59-year-old traffic veteran, one of the last live traffic reporters on and in radio.

Kaminski’s typical day begins with waking up at 3:30 a.m. He reports to the station’s traffic producer at 4:30 a.m. and flies out of Linden Airport in New Jersey in time for his first live report at 5:30 a.m.

“We go to where the conditions are the worst,” he says. He often hears from loyal listeners who call in tips (212-975-8888) in addition to the station’s ground team that monitors police scanners, live traffic cameras, Google Maps and WAZE.

Tom Kaminski

Kaminski doesn’t see new traffic apps as competition. “You look at WAZE and see an icon where delays start. But you can’t tell if it’s a stopped car or an overturned truck, so I’m their eyes in the sky painting the word pictures.”

At 7 a.m. the helicopter has to land to refuel, but the traffic reports continue. When the weather conditions are bad… low ceiling, strong winds, poor visibility… Kaminski works from his base station, either at the airport or from his technically equipped house. Despite decades of flying in all kinds of weather, he claims: “I have never been airsick.”