On Set: RSD Director Linda Dougherty takes winter inventory
Inside Transportation Host Matt Reichmann Says: The flooding wasn't the only major challenge winter presented to King County. Before the flood it was heavy snowfall the blanketed the region, severely impacting travel and forcing Roads Division worker back to the 12-hour shifts they're assigned during severe weather events. For more insight into the massive effort it was to battle this year's winter weather, we welcome King County Road Services Division Director Linda Dougherty, Linda thank you for joining us. King County Road Services Division Directory Linda Dougherty Says: Hi, I'm glad to be here. Inside Transportation Host Matt Reichmann Says: So, first just kind of give us a sense of the severity of the winter weather we saw. We know it was kind of anamolous, but how did this one compare to other winters? King County Road Services Division Directory Linda Dougherty Says: Well, starting out with the snowstorm, which started about December 12th. It actually ran two and a half weeks which is [an] extremely long time for our usual winter snowstorms. They're usually shorter in duration and certainly don't usually reach sea level as they did this time. And in fact because of the amount of snow that fell throughout King County, it actually ended up being a federally declared weather event. So, it was quite unusual and I hope we don't see another one this winter at least like that. Inside Transportation Host Matt Reichmann Says: And, what was your sense of how King County residents were directly impacted by this. Obviously it's going to, as we said earlier, it's going to affect the way people are going to travel. But, give me a sense of what you saw in terms of how county residents were impacted by it. King County Road Services Division Directory Linda Dougherty Says: Well, I think the duration was especially difficult for people. One of the things we work real hard on doing, and I think we did effectively, but the fact that the snow weather lasted so long, normally our first priority, we actually have a prioritized system of addressing roads in terms of plowing and de-icing. Because the goal is to keep up the most critical roads, to open them up and keep them passable. And so we necessarily had to focus all of our energy on those high priority routes. And normally by the time we get those routes in good shape, the snow has been light enough that it's really starting to melt in the residential areas, unfortunately that didn't happen this time. And so, individuals living out in the county, and at higher elevations in the county were frustrated I believe, and I can certainly understand that, because we weren't able because the snow kept falling, we weren't able to really get to their residential streets. And even then, only a few selected residential streets, kind of the collector streets within neighborhoods, until toward the last week of the snowstorm. And so a lot of people were, they ended up being quite isolated, because they could not get in or out of their neighborhoods. So, we recognize that was difficult for people. And I appreciate everyone's patience, I know it impacted a lot of folks in that way. Inside Transportation Host Matt Reichmann Says: And it always ends up there's only so much we can do when it comes to trying to predict the weather. King County Road Services Division Directory Linda Dougherty Says: Unfortunately, that's the case. Inside Transportation Host Matt Reichmann Says: Have we been able to kind of tally up the amount of damage there's been? I know that always takes months and months after a storm actually hits, but do we have a sense of that yet? King County Road Services Division Directory Linda Dougherty Says: Well, there were two separate events, as you mentioned there was also the flooding event that followed. The snow event itself, most of the impact that we experienced was actually the amount of effort it took and the amount of sand and other materials, de-icer materials that it required for us to actually get the roads open and keep thme open. We had some smaller amount of damage to our maintenance shop facilities, and a few other locations that totaled about $4.5 million, which is a lot for a snow storm. Unfortunately that pales in comparison to the amount of damage the county road system experienced as a result of the flooding. And so, for the flooding alone we're up and around the $18 million level for the damage to the county's road system. Inside Transportation Host Matt Reichmann Says: So that was pretty significant? King County Road Services Division Directory Linda Dougherty Says: It was pretty significant, we had roads wash away in the flood waters so. Inside Transportation Host Matt Reichmann Says: And as we mentioned earlier, there's alwaysw an inherent lack of predictability. Is there anything we think we can take away from this winter and apply it to winter's in the future despite the fact that we just can't predict the weather? King County Road Services Division Directory Linda Dougherty Says: Well, I think we've done a pretty good job over the years of trying to learn something from every event that occurs. Some of those things we learn from all of the citizens out there who travel all of our roadways every day. So they e-mail us and call us with suggestions and also it's nice to get their kudos, because we did get a lot of those. What we actually did and we're doing more of, we've been putting up traffic cameras at a lot of our signalized intersections over the last four or five years. And what we did during both of these events, is that we actually because there was no congestion because people were having a hard time getting around. We actually refocused the cameras so that you could actually see the roadways leading to the intersection and we had over 10 million hits to our website over the snow and flooding because people were actually going to our website to see what did it look like out there on that particular road that they travel every day normally. And so, we're going to continue adding traffic cameras because they're turning out to be quite versatile. Inside Transportation Host Matt Reichmann Says: Good tools for people. King County Road Services Division Directory Linda Dougherty Says: Yeah, and then we're also, as we're buying new trucks as the old ones wear out. There's some new trucks where you can actually swap out the truck fixtures that make up the back of the truck. So we have one, and we have a mini cement mixer, and then we have a dump truck attachment that we can put on that, and we also bought a snow plow, a blade for that. So we're buying another one of those trucks in place of replacing a dump truck. And then we also have some additional dump trucks that are older, and as we replace them, we're going to have seven of them additional in time ford the 2009-2010 storm season, although I hope it's not as bad that we'll be adding to our fleet that will be capable of plowing and sanding the roads. So that should enable us to deal even more effectively with even major, major snow storms. Inside Transportation Host Matt Reichmann Says: Got it, all right Linda, thank you very much for your time.
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