Dear Ms. Rasooly:

Thank you for your email of January 3, 2010 regarding snow removal during the December blizzard. I am pleased that you shared your suggestions with me, and the County Council, as well. The Department of Transportation (DOT) is committed to providing a high level of service in meeting the needs of Montgomery County residents, and I regret to hear that you were less than pleased with the treatment and condition of streets in your neighborhood.

During the December storm, DOT staff was also disappointed by several problems encountered with the new interactive website snow map application. However, I am pleased to report that DOT’s technical group has addressed these nuisances, and fully expect the program to function properly in the future.

I understand the difficulty a delay in snow treatment causes residents and I regret the inconvenience. As you note, the county snow plan focuses its entire fleet of plows on clearing primary and secondary roads to bare pavement as first priority. This approach ensures full mobility for all county emergency services. Following successful control of primary and secondary arterial roads, all equipment is dispatched to specific neighborhood plow routes. In the case of the blizzard, the first pass through neighborhood plow routes started Sunday morning at 2 am. Neighborhood plow operations then continued through Tuesday afternoon, interrupted only to revisit the primary and secondary streets to ensure clear pavements for the Monday and Tuesday morning rush hours. Our workers also continued to respond to individual ice complaints.

We, also, would like to be able to provide special treatment of individual communities, but we are simply not able to do so. Our activities are designed to reach all of our neighborhoods as efficiently and effectively as possible, but particular snow and weather conditions such as those we experienced during the blizzard occasionally impede these efforts, and delays are experienced. Icy conditions following the heavy snowfall caused difficulties for our plows and those of our contractors as they did their best to see that these streets were adequately treated. We hope our residents will be patient on these occasions, and understand that we will respond to complaints as we are able, and that we always keep their concerns in mind.

Thank you again for writing. As the winter season progresses, DOT will review its snow and ice control procedures in a continuing effort to improve its operations. I appreciate your input and I assure you it will be included it in our considerations.

Sincerely,

Keith Compton
Chief, Division of Highway Services
Department of Transportation

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