This ice is not so nice.
Cleanup efforts remain underway in Maryland’s Montgomery County after snow, ice and frigid temperatures wrapped their frozen fingers around the D.C. region.
Key areas of concern include “snowcrete” piles on Wisconsin Avenue and Connecticut Avenue inside the Beltway, which have gridlock and choke-points.
WTOP’s Neal Augenstein checked them out Thursday morning.
“Here on Connecticut Avenue, you simply don’t have the merge and turn lanes that you need for a normal commute, because they’re covered with snowcrete,” Augenstein reported.
“Getting off the Beltway onto Connecticut, there’s no merge and travel lane.”
That means that if you want to get on the Beltway, there’s bad news: some lanes are still icy. And it’s not the kind of ice that can be cleared with the pass of a snowplow.
“This is going to require crews with heavy machinery chopping and removing tons of ice. This morning, that ice is blocking travel lanes. And it’s not going to melt anytime soon,” Augenstein said.
WTOP Traffic Reporter Dave Dildine has been sounding the alarm for some time.
“Piles of ice at sensitive points on the road network that have led to major backups on Wisconsin Avenue, Rockville Pike, Connecticut Avenue, East-West Highway and Old Georgetown Road,” Dildine said.
State officials say they’re working on the issue.
Charlie Gischler with the Maryland Department of Transportation State Highway told WTOP that the department will reach out to its Montgomery County division to see whether crews will be headed to Wisconsin Avenue, Connecticut Avenue and East-West Highway to clear the ice.
Gischler told WTOP on Tuesday that “this was a particularly brutal storm.”
“The big problem was two things, the sleet and freezing rain that fell on top of it, and then the bitter cold temperatures for sustained days in a row,” Gischler said. “You can’t plow some of that. You have to add literally, one scoop full at a time, physically remove it.”
Montgomery County’s Chief Administrative Officer Richard Madaleno told WTOP that it’s been challenging for crews to haul the leftover snow and ice to drop-off sites around the county.
“It became so heavy, so fast, and the type of plows we have, the height of the plows, it has been a struggle to move things,” he said.
Clearing the turn lanes takes a lot of work.
“We just have not had the equipment necessary to clear to the standard we would like to have,” Madaleno said. “This is a partnership in Maryland. About two thirds of our roads are cleared by us, and a third cleared by the state and the municipal governments, and everyone is working very hard to get it done.”
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