Virginia鈥檚 Department of Transportation has over 1,500 trucks across Northern Virginia responding to problematic roads and spots after snow earlier this week, and now it鈥檚 prepared to handle the light snow that swept across the D.C. region Friday night.
Ellen Kamilakis, a VDOT spokeswoman, said crews didn鈥檛 have to pretreat the area鈥檚 roads ahead of Friday night鈥檚 snow, because there鈥檚 still residual salt and sand that鈥檚 down from the last bout of snow.
鈥淲e have had crews out 24/7 since Saturday and they’re going to continue in that posture through this storm as well,鈥� Kamilakis said.
In the aftermath of a winter weather event, the agency 鈥� which is responsible for many of the highways and residential streets across Northern Virginia 鈥� prioritizes interstates and what it considers high-volume secondary streets.
Then, crews work to make side streets passable, which Kamilakis defined as an 8- to 10-foot-wide vehicle path that鈥檚 drivable with caution. The agency said drivers shouldn鈥檛 expect to see bare pavement.
In a news release Friday, VDOT said over the next few days, crews will patrol roads 鈥渢o treat for potential refreeze of wet pavement as snow and ice melt during the day.鈥�
Road monitors with the agency check how the roads are doing, 鈥渁nd independently verifying that the roads meet the definition of passable,鈥� Kamilakis said.
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It鈥檚 unlikely that giant pickup trucks are used on residential streets, Kamilakis said, because the roads are more narrow and not made to have heavy vehicles on them. Usually, it鈥檚 the smaller fleet of 1-ton pickups that service the neighborhoods.
鈥淭he best insurance policy for this is that we have AVL (automatic vehicle location) on the trucks, so we know that the trucks have been on everybody’s street,鈥� Kamilakis said.
Once all of the streets meet the agency鈥檚 standard, crews begin working on areas that residents called in to express concerns about. Over 1,500 trucks tended to those areas Friday night, Kamilakis said.
Anyone can report a road problem online at my.vdot.virginia.gov, 鈥渁nd crews can go through and double check or verify and potentially put down more abrasives if need be,鈥� Kamilakis said.
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