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VDOT Drops the Ball

Today, it snowed. We’ve known for at least four days that it was supposed to snow today, and things went almost exactly the way they’d been predicted The only thing that didn’t go exactly as guessed was that the snow started falling around 9:00 a.m., rather than 1:00 p.m., but even that was predicted as of late last night.

In other words, there is no frickin’ excuse for the chaos on the roads in the DC metro area. Look, I know that winter weather makes driving dangerous, but when I left the office around 12:30 p.m. today (after about two inches of snow had already fallen), most roads had not even been touched by VDOT crews—making the situation much more hazardous than it would usually be.

Normally, VDOT salts the roads before the precipitation starts falling. I can’t count the times that snow was predicted (but never came) and I woke up to find all the roads covered in a new coat of grungy road salt, just in case. Today, nothing. Even worse, VDOT was instructing us to stay at work so they would have time to treat the roads.

Well, given that they didn’t get very far with those roads overnight, I think the chances they’ll have them done by the evening rush are are pretty slim. Thus, I left early. You would think that three hours after the snow started falling, they’d have at least had enough time to put one layer of salt on the major freeways. Nope. Nothing.

Even if VDOT had done their job, the roads would have been dangerous—what with all the INVINCIBLE SUV MORONS! driving all over the place (I watched one Jeep Cherokee careen into a guard rail today). But major thoroughfares and freeways left untreated in a major metropolitan area during a well-predicted snow storm . . . there’s no excuse for that.

Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.