ROCKVILLE, Md. – Drivers across the D.C. area are slowly returning to their normal routines, yet more work needs to be done to clear local roads. As a result, some motorists are frustrated and underwhelmed with the progress.
“I’ve been in this neighborhood for 30 years and this is the worst I have ever seen,” Rockville resident Anselmo Yaya told WTOP.
“They did what they could,” Naomi Abrams said of her half-plowed Rockville street. “There were vehicles parked on either side, but they haven’t come back since we moved them.”
She would like the streets and walkways cleared.
“Some sidewalks would be lovely,” Abrams said. “I walk my dog a lot. Even throughout the neighborhood, there’s a lot of ice on the sidewalks. Even going to walk to a bus stop, there’s no sidewalk to walk on at all.”
While much of that is a Montgomery County problem, there are still issues with many major state-maintained roadways.
“Traffic is a nightmare,” Yaya said. “It took me two hours to get from here to the D.C. line on Connecticut Avenue. It’s just a lot of snow on the road. It hasn’t been cleaned up. It was messy, it’s still messy.”
Maryland State Highway Administration officials take issue with the complaints.
“We really don’t think people have any conception of how time consuming it is when you have no place else to put the snow,” spokesman David Buck told WTOP. “You have to pick it up with a front-end loader, put it in a dump truck and take it away because there is no place to put it where you are not putting it back on a sidewalk or on a county road.”
And to do that throughout the state is quite a task.
“It was a record snowfall for a reason; it’s a record cleanup for a reason,” Buck continued. “We’ve re-deployed some equipment from the Eastern Shore, but we continue to work 24/7 and we’ll probably be working through the weekend as well.”
Crews in Virginia have also worked hard to clear streets and highways. Unlike Maryland, Virginia has to clear streets in all commonwealth’s counties, except for Arlington and Henrico.
“When we did the math, if you were to drive a plow truck across the country five times, that’s the amount of lane miles that we take care of,” VDOT spokeswoman Ellen Kamilakis explained. The department is responsible for clearing 16,000 roads.
With such a large responsibility, residents who were hoping to get a second plow passing aren’t going to get it.
“We’re generally not going to come back into the neighborhoods,” Kamilakis said. “As long as it has the one passable lane, that’s what we are going to stay focused on. Our goal is always one passable lane, which is it’s going to be snow covered, it’s going to be a little rough, but if you are in a rear wheel drive car, you can drive on it, that’s essentially our goal.”
Still, complaints can be heard throughout the region.
“For everybody saying something in Montgomery County, we have someone saying something in Prince George’s or Howard or Baltimore or Anne Arundel or Harford or somewhere else,” Buck said.
“When we had something similar to this in 2010, this is the same amount of time that it took. And what we had in 1996, it took a full week. It takes two days to get 30 inches of snow; in the Montgomery County area particularly, we had areas that had 38, 39 inches of snow.”
People have a right to feel any way they want, Kamilakis said.
“We don’t know any of the details of those kinds of situations, so it’s not something that we get defensive over. We don’t take anything like that personally. We work every snowstorm as hard as we can and we try to improve in whatever way we can and if people have suggestions, we have open ears.”
Crews in Maryland and Virginia have worked around the clock for over a week to get roads fully cleared. MDSHA hopes to have everything cleared by the end of the weekend. VDOT doesn’t have a timeline for when it expects everything to get completed.
If you live in Virginia and there is street that has been missed or there is a safety concern, like a snow mound blocking the street, VDOT asks that you call them at 1-800-FOR-ROAD to let them know.
Where’s the plow? #Arlington residents say they’re still waiting for snow to be cleared https://t.co/hJBWXTA3nN pic.twitter.com/J8GzrOh9Rh
— Misty Arthurs (@bezitonohix) January 30, 2016
Lanes still blocked by snow in Fairfax drive in Arlington makes for a mess. Hope it’s fixed before next week @ArlingtonVA @VaDOTNOVA — Pinky (@MK_Bay_Bay) January 29, 2016
Neighborhood in AACO hasn’t been plowed yet. Poor mailman has been stuck for a solid couple of minutes now. @WTOP pic.twitter.com/ANlfZXI8bg
— Meg Hasken (@MHaskenWTOP) January 28, 2016
