OPINION
I have one simple rule in life that has worked to great effectiveness: You only get what you ask for. This doesn’t mean that you always get what you ask for.
That being said, you never get that for which you don’t ask.
Government at all levels is driven by those people who ask for things. Not many people ask for things; therefore, government decisions are driven by the few who ask.
If you want to understand the decisions government makes, just look at the folks who are asking for things. Because not many people have time to actually participate in the process (that “earning a living” or “taking care of a family” thing) most of us are not really aware of who is asking for what.
When the trucks show up to turn that lovely road in front of your house into a four lane divided highway, the house on the corner suddenly is replaced by a 7-Eleven, or that woods behind your house suddenly becomes a warehouse, it many come as a surprise to many who weren’t paying attention.
The first category of folks asking for things are those who profit from the decisions made by government. There are entire business practices devoted to asking for things. The business of packaging proposals for the government’s consideration, preparing publicity and the story for the public, and navigating the administrative procedures to get something approved is big business. For them, business is good.
If you want to get a quick list of people who make a profit asking the government for things, just follow the money. In the case of State and local Government, just look up who is donating their money to politicians by using the Virginia Public Access Project website.
Only a fool would think that there is no relationship between the “big money” businesses donate to political candidates and the decisions they expect those political candidates to make on their behalf.
The second category is people who want to stop government projects in their tracks – those projects usually asked for by lobbyists. The halters are generally private citizens with jobs, families and obligations that take up most of their waking hours. In today’s economic climate, you can add worrying about keeping your job or finding another one to that list. Watching who is asking government for what really isn’t a priority to this second category.
Also, this category is generally at a disadvantage as they don’t make their living asking the government for things, are usually unfamiliar with the processes involved in approving something, and perhaps have never even attended or watched a government meeting in action because they are busy with that earning a living or doing that whole taking care of a family thing.
All they have to offer is their vote.
When the two categories are matched up it’s not a fair fight; however, surprisingly the private citizens win occasionally.
When it comes to elections, money increases the odds of winning. On the other hand, you can influence voters but you can’t actually buy votes. The trick is to measure that second category’s resolve to determine if it influences enough votes to create a tipping point regarding the public’s perception regarding any particular candidate.
The math is very imprecise.
Most residents live in a very fragile world blissfully unaware of the decisions that government is making for them because they are busy with their lives. It often takes something like the rumor of a country road upon which they live being paved over into a four-lane divided highway, an asphalt plant being built next door, or a parkway planned to go through their farm to get their attention.
Sometimes, they find out too late.
Social media has changed all that. Thanks to Facebook, Twitter, blogs, real-time on line news outlets, and email issues that were once the province of a few may now quickly go viral. What might have been two or three citizens speaking up can quickly become hundreds or thousands of angry residents asking for something.
They are often asking to stop something.
You do not have to accept a Government driven by a few folks who literally make their living and their fortunes profiting from the decisions it makes. While this column is really discussing Government at all levels, Prince William County is blessed with a number of blogs that offer a variety of points of view to give you different perspectives on compelling public issues.
Washington Post – Tom Jackman, the State of Nova. Even handed reporting on a variety of issues. It is every local politician’s fear that Jackman will pick up on something in a local blog and turn it into national news, as he has done several times in the past.
PWCnews.us covers the spectrum of political thought in Prince William County. PWCnews is particularly interesting because it presents interviews with local political personalities, community activists, and “movers and shakers”.
The Sheriff of Nottingham of Prince William County. Often “over the top” and very personal reporting on Price William County issues. That being said, the quality of its analysis continues to improve.
The Prince William Conservation Alliance. The Prince William Conservation Alliance is an environmental advocacy group; however, I have noticed that they make a lot of business arguments to influence public policy. Charlie Grimes is my favorite blogger on this website. I don’t always agree with Charlie, but he makes me think. Occasionally, he changes my mind.
Moonhowlings. An unapologetic left of center blog that usually does some really good reporting on a wide variety of issues. It “makes me think”.
Black Velvet Bruce Lee. If you want to know what the most Conservative elements of the Republican Party is thinking, this is where you go.
The Derecho. Often “over the top” bordering on “outrageous”; however, this blog’s apparent insider knowledge of how things work provides an interesting dimension to any issue it choses to investigate.
Virginia Virtucon. Solid conservative reporting with a point of view.
OurschoolsPWC. Critical review of what’s going on with the local school system. They get half of Prince William County’s annual revenue, so I’m interested in where it is going.
Prince William County Government. I go here to see what local government wants me to think.
PWC Education Reform Blog – A citizen driven blog operated by a group of parents striving to improve the quality of instruction our children receive in Prince William County Schools.
Most people tend to gravitate to news that reinforces their point of view. I like to follow blogs and news outlets with which I perhaps disagree to understand what the other side is saying. I hope you get out of your comfort zone, browse a few local blogs, go ahead and “slap your head” when one of them offends you (they do that because it generates reader interest), and add whatever they have to say to your thought processes.
I suggest you take all of them with a grain of salt, and do your own fact checking.
If you find something that you want to either confirm or gather more information on, do what I do. Contact your Prince William County Supervisor and ask him or her what’s going on. Send an email, schedule lunch or an office visit, or pick up the phone and call. Fun fact! Every request from a citizen is a legal Freedom of Information Act request, and must be answered. Which gets back to the purpose of this column — you get the government for which you ask, so ask!
I hope you add my column to your list, as I’ll be here every Sunday.
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Thank you so much. Moving on to item 26. Virginia Department of Transportation the Winter Weather Report by Andrew Thorpe, Assistant Resident Engineer.
Right. Sounds good. This is, remember, a winter weather report.
This isn’t our opportunity to talk to him about all our road projects, okay? Just giving a heads up. Okay. Madam Chair, Madam Vice Chair, members of the board, thank you for having me.
Happy holidays. Andrew Thorpe, VDOT Assistant Resident Engineer. Obviously, Kyle’s the one who’s up here most frequently.
He did ask me to send his regards. He’s at home with a brand new baby, so everybody’s happy and healthy and I’m sure he’ll look forward to seeing you soon. Happy holidays.
With the holidays comes the potential for winter weather. The presentation tonight really is just kind of an overview of our winter weather program, our snow removal operations. The goal of it is to give you all some information so that way when you all get questions, you have some information.
Use some resources that VDOT provides and just an overview for the public and some of our frequently asked questions. Just as an overview, VDOT Fredericksburg District, I’m sure many of you all are very well aware. Our district does cover 14 counties, including the Fredericksburg area, the Middle Peninsula, and the Northern Neck.
It’s a very diverse district, so particularly when you talk about winter weather, what it can be doing down at Gloucester Point can be very different than what’s happening in either the Hartwood or Rock Hill areas. Even within Stafford County, we can see very different conditions from the west side of the county to the east, and our snow removal plans reflect that. Within our residency specifically, so the office that both Kyle and I work in, we cover the counties in green on the map.
So that would be Stafford, Spotsylvania, and Caroline counties. Within those counties, we do maintain 328 lane miles of interstate highway all along 95, 639 lane miles of primary roads, which are anything with a route number less than 600. So in Stafford, that would include Route 1, Route 17, Route 3, and then over 4,000 lane miles of secondary roadways.
Secondary roadways in particular is a number that is always increasing, particularly in Stafford County. There’s a lot of development going on, a lot of new subdivisions that come in every year, and as those subdivisions come into the state system, we take on maintenance for them in the wintertime. We also perform snow removal on all 12 of our commuter lots, several of which are in Stafford County.
We maintain 511 bridges and large culverts, and within the residency staff, we have about 120 VDOT employees, all of whom have some variation of a winter weather assignment, as well as some district staff that we use to augment. When it comes to equipment and materials, statewide VDOT has set aside $220 million this year for snow removal, which is pretty consistent with previous years. Within our residencies of the three counties I mentioned, we have 42 pieces of state equipment, so those are our actual VDOT-owned, VDOT-employed pieces of snow removal equipment.
We have over 705 pieces of hired equipment, so these are contractors that we hire on each year, working everything from large tandem axle dump trucks, to motor graders, to pickup trucks. And out of those, over 260 of those pieces are in Stafford County in particular, working on both the primaries and secondaries. On the interstate, we have 167 pieces of hired equipment as well, so that’s 167 pieces dedicated to 95 through our three counties, which totals over 900 pieces total of snow removal equipment in our three counties.
With a major snowstorm expected to impact the region starting Sunday, January 5, 2024, the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) updated the Stafford County Board of Supervisors on its winter storm preparations late last month.
We brought some of our contractors in to go over different information with them, make sure they’re up to speed, make sure they know some of our priority routes, and be ready for the season. As far as materials goes, we do have over 29,000 tons of salt, sand, and mixed abrasives that we can use to put out on the roads to try and improve the conditions and safety on the roads. And then 58,000 gallons of salt brine, which I will certainly get into here in a minute.
So how do we prepare? One of the things we rely on most is obviously our forecasts. So I will tell you every morning I get up this time of year, first thing I check is the 10-day forecast, checking to see if there’s the possibility of anything on the horizon. If there is the possibility of snow, we work with several of our forecast partners, both the National Weather Service and DTN, who’s actually a meteorology contractor with VDOT.
If a storm’s approaching, we will have daily, if not multiple times a day, weather briefings from those sources, so that way we can make sure that we’re preparing the right response for the forecasted storm. Once we kind of hone in on what that storm’s going to look like, we’ll develop our mobilization plans. We do have pre-set plans that we develop in the off-season, so that way once we know, all right, we’re going to have three inches here, two inches there, maybe a dusting here, those plans are already in place, we can pull those off the shelf and be ready to go.
For smaller events, we typically mobilize about 12 to 18 hours prior to the forecasted start of the storm. Obviously for larger events, we might start getting ready even sooner. Our goal is to make sure we have our contractors equipped, stocked, and pre-deployed, so that way when the snow starts falling, we’re ready to flip the switch and get going.
We will stage trucks along major routes, particularly the primaries in the area, and up and down 95. All employees are ready to work all hands on deck, so if you work at VDOT, and whether you’re an accountant, or you work in our shop, or you’re a maintenance employee, you have some role to play during snow. It truly is an all hands on deck process for us.
I did mention pre-treatment there, I’ll get more into that here in a second. Incident command and communication. This has been a big focus for us the last few years, trying to make sure that we have open lines of communication with all of our local partners, in particular our first responder agencies, whether it’s fire and rescue, sheriff’s office, state police, VDEM at the state level.
One of the things we’ve stood up in the last few years is whenever we enter a level three storm, we rate our levels one through five, so two inches or more of snow forecasted. We open up our residency building, make sure we have some open lines of communication with all of our local partners to make sure that if there are any issues as the storm unfolds, those lines of communication are open, we can try and solve issues as quickly as possible. Again, the goal is to try to facilitate the most efficient and effective communication with all of our partners, and we do hold regular briefings with all those partners, at least every six hours or so.
Pre-treatment. Brine. This is one of the areas we get questions a lot, pretty frequently.
What is brine? Brine really is nothing more than a saltwater solution. The goal of brine is to essentially get a head start on the storm. It may occur up to 72 hours before the storm starts, and it is dependent on what the storm looks like.
We want to make sure our pavement temperature is above 20 degrees. If it’s lower than that, when we put the brine down, it could actually turn to ice immediately, which is obviously not our goal. We don’t want the event to begin as rain.
If the event is going to rain for several hours, then we end up washing the brine off before the snow even actually starts. Like I said, the decision is made on a case-by-case basis. The snow and two storms are alike.
It’s a decision we’ll make based on a number of factors, the weather coming in, how the storm is going to start, and then also whether we already have salt on the road. If we already have roads completely covered in salt from a prior storm, the additional brine really is not going to do much for us, so we might not have brine in that situation. We do look at our critical locations to prioritize.
Certainly 95 with its interstate ramps, bridges, and overpasses, as well as our time allows depending on how soon we’ve gotten the forecast. We’ll try to hit our primary roads and any high-volume secondary roads as time allows. Certainly 610 is a secondary road that’s a major priority for us, and in all reality we treat it like a primary.
Road clearing priorities. So really, when it comes to what roads are the main focus at what point in the storm, we kind of take a tiered approach. So obviously, 95 and its ramps, bridges, and overpasses is one of our top priorities.
We want to make sure that that road stays open and passable, followed by our primary roads, which I mentioned earlier. We also prioritize roads that lead to public safety facilities, whether that’s a fire station, a rescue station, hospitals in the area, any of those kind of major public safety facilities. We want to make sure that first responders have as much access as we can possibly provide.
We then look to our high-volume secondary roads. With those, we’re again trying to hit as many people as we can, as quickly as we can. Our commuter lots will depend in part on when the storm’s hitting.
If the storm’s hitting on a Saturday morning, it might be a different response than if we expect a lot of snow to be there first thing Monday morning commute. Once conditions approve on those facilities, that’s when we’ll start to move into our subdivisions from our lower-volume secondary roads. With those subdivisions, we do have drivers that report to each of our area headquarters and pick up assigned maps, which have all the subdivisions labeled.
Plowing the subdivisions really only begins once we have two inches or more of snow on the ground. When we start plowing our subdivisions with less than two inches of snow, in some cases we can end up causing more damage than we’re actually seeing a benefit for. That’s part of our priority there.
Again, we’re going to plow and treat our main subdivision streets first to open up access for emergency vehicles. Crews then may return to plow side streets and cul-de-sacs once the main roads are accessible. Our goal is to reach the most residents as quickly as possible.
Hills, curves, and intersections are also kind of hotspot areas for us. We try to make sure that if we have known issue areas, we’ll deploy some resources towards those to try and make them passable. What does passable mean? Passable really is just an eight to ten foot path clear for emergency vehicles.
The first time we come through, we might not be making the entire road black. We might not be clearing it edge to edge. In a major storm, our goal is to open up that access for emergency vehicles.
We may come through at first with a relatively small pass and then return to clean up things later. Some frequently asked questions. These are things that we hear a lot, so I’m sure you all might hear them as well.
What time will a plow reach my street? Again, for routine storms, our goal is to shoot for trying to make all roads passable in 48 hours. With a significant snowfall, that could take longer. It’s really hard for us to provide a specific time frame for when plows might arrive.
Again, it really depends on the storm, depends on where we’re getting hit the hardest and how we’re working through our priorities. But we’ll try to provide as much information as we can. I live on a cul-de-sac or side street.
Why are the roads being plowed first? Again, back to our priorities. We want to get access to as many people as possible as quickly as possible. Focusing on the higher volume roads, even within subdivisions, is the way we try to achieve that.
What if I have a medical emergency during a storm? How will an ambulance reach me? This is actually a question we get from time to time, and I always like to tell folks, if you have a medical emergency, call 911. Our folks are very skilled, and they’re good at many things. Providing medical care is not one of their skill sets.
Like I said before, we try to keep our lines of communication open with all of our local first responders. If they come to us and say that they’re having issue getting to somebody, we will redeploy resources to try and make that the utmost priority, public safety being the number one goal. Why doesn’t VDOT put down sand and salt before it snows? The real challenge with doing this is that if we put hard sand and salt down before a storm, chances are, between traffic and the wind, it’s just going to blow off the road.
This is when we try to use the salt brine to via a liquid get that to attach to the road, but we won’t always have an opportunity to do that necessarily. Why does the plow push snow in front of my mailbox or the end of my driveway? Can VDOT come back to remove the snow? You nailed it. We try to avoid this whenever possible.
Certainly we try to avoid piling up huge piles of snow at somebody’s mailbox or in front of their driveway. Unfortunately, given the work that we’re trying to do, it’s going to happen from time to time. There’s going to be some snow that gets deposited back in front of somebody’s driveway.
We don’t have the resources to return and remove snow from every driveway in the county. Again, we’re trying to focus on getting access to folks. To avoid double work, we do tell folks to shovel snow from the end of your driveway, either after the plow passes, or if you need to do it before, when you’re facing the road, shovel the snow to the right of your driveway.
That way, as the plow comes through, the big pile of snow that you have shoveled is on the correct side of the road, where it doesn’t get pushed right back into your driveway. Again, frequently asked questions because we get asked quite a bit. Just some additional information, some resources for folks.
Like I mentioned before, we do have additional staff assigned to work snow monitors for quality control. We try to make sure that our contractors are where they’re supposed to be, doing what they’re supposed to be doing, and being good stewards of the taxpayer. We actually have implemented now within the last few years, automatic vehicle locators, so AVLs.
We do have GPS units on all of our contracted equipment, which helps us, one, make sure the response is happening how it should, people are where they’re supposed to be, but also can help us on an audit side after the event and make sure that everything was operating how it should. The public can actually see these GPS units when we enter a level 3 storm or higher via the v.plows.org site. You can go online and see where the plows are working in your area.
How can drivers and residents help? The biggest thing is to be prepared. I think your fire and rescue and your sheriff’s office would probably tell folks the same thing. The biggest thing to do in winter weather is to be prepared and to try and stay off the roads whenever possible.
Monitor forecasts closely. If you’re able to, telework or adjusting commutes is a great option for folks. Try to give our crews as much room as they can to get the work done.
Certainly we want to… Driving in the snow can be dangerous and our crews are out there and we want to make the most efficient stuff that they can. Ensure enough gas, wiper fluid, proper tires and all those things are available if you do have to go out. After the storms, follow the driveway shoveling tips.
Give plows plenty of room and be patient. We will reach everybody. Some additional information and resources, again, the v.plows.org. 511 is another great resource.
Our 511 site is where we are constantly updating our road conditions throughout all of our counties. At a minimum, we’re updating those conditions every 6 hours. If the conditions are changing, we’re updating them even more frequently.
We’ve got staff dedicated to making sure those roadway conditions stay up-to-date and are logging any road closures or trees down and things of that nature. We have a lot of social media sources. Our VDOT Facebook page for our expert district certainly has quite a few folks on it.
It’s a great tool for us to get information out. The other big number I want to highlight here is the 1-800-4-ROAD number. This is our 24-7 customer service center number.
During a storm, we do augment staff at that customer service center. We have folks in our local office monitoring those requests as they come in. Certainly, if folks have gone 48 hours beyond the end of the storm and they feel like the road’s been missed, that’s a great resource for folks to reach out to us.
We can confirm whether it’s been missed or we’re still working to get there. Really, for any questions that you all get, I would try to direct them to that number as much as possible, even potholes after the event. It’s a great resource there.
With that, I will certainly take any questions. Thank you for that report, Andrew. Anyone have any questions? We’ll have lots when our people’s driveways or mailboxes are covered.
That’s usually how it goes. It’s usually not VDOT. It’s the contractors, but it’s okay.
That’s just part of the process, as you say. From my side, I hope we have no snow this year, but we will see. We need snow, Andrew.
Tell Kyle that we all wish him the best for the holidays with his new baby, and we wish you the same. Absolutely. Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Mary Washington Hospital celebrated the arrival of the Fredericksburg region’s first baby of the new year.
Experience the passion and drama of Puccini’s “The Girl from the Golden West”.
Featuring special guest musicians from The Chesapeake Youth Orchestra, this performance brings Puccini’s masterpiece to life with an extraordinary cast.
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Travel to French soil and celebrate with us for an unforgettable evening of delicious food, wine and music.
What better way to celebrate the end of the 2024 wine harvest in style than at the Embassy of France at DC’s only official celebration?
This is the Wine Event Of The Year!
