While most Virginia Tech students eagerly await cancellations and delays because of the snow, other businesses in Blacksburg are either preventing those disruptions from happening or notifying the community about them.
When snow starts falling, the trucks begin plowing, the buses scope out the road conditions and the Blacksburg and Tech alert systems are on standby.
Bill Woolwine, assistant director of field operations for the town of Blacksburg, takes care of sidewalk and street maintenance as well as all snow removal. If it snows at night when Woolwine isn’t in his office, the police department will notify him.
To prepare for a snowstorm, he sets up his drivers who work for 12-hour shifts starting at 6 a.m. and ending at 6 p.m. for the dayshift, and reverse for the nightshift. He also puts chains on the trucks and snowplows on the pickup trucks so that he can begin taking care of the roads.
Woolwine applies chemicals such as chloride combined with salt to the road to thaw the snow.
“I start applying chemicals as soon as the snow starts to stick to the roads,” Woolwine said. “I start pushing the snow off the roads when the drifts are approximately two inches.”
One of Woolwine’s other duties is plowing apartment complexes on Prices Fork Road and Toms Creek Road.
After a snow, Woolwine explains that they wash their equipment, do maintenance on their trucks like repairing broken chains and replacing the rubber on the front of the snowplows in order to get ready for the next storm.
While Woolwine maintains the roads, Ken Tucker, marketing manager for the Blacksburg Transit, handles external communications in various situations. One such situation is bad weather. For example, if there is a snowstorm that begins during the night, the marketing department receives a call letting it know if the BT is ready to run or not. From there, Tucker and the marketing department communicate this message to the public via their Web site, phone system, TV and radio.
To gauge if there is going to be an upcoming snowstorm, the marketing department monitors weather reports. In addition, the operations department checks weather sources and reports on a daily basis. It also participates in emergency management, preparedness, reporting and meetings, all of which happen before a store.
There are many different departments within the BT that help decide how to handle a snowstorm, with the first being the operations department.
“They’re the people who determine who’s operating the buses, what schedules they run on and (if they) are they running safely,” Tucker said. “If there are problems, operations take care of that.”
If it snowed during the night, operation supervisors typically start driving around the BT system at 3 a.m. to 4:30 a.m., before the buses begin running. The operations supervisors report back via phone to the operations manager to discuss the road conditions.
“The operations manager,” Tucker said, “at the same time while taking all their reports, is also consulting the local law enforcement, the university, town officials, our safety and training department, and public works.
“From there, they make a decision on whether or not it is safe to operate, or if we have to delay service or change routes.”
The BT also has a safety and training department that prepares operators before a snowstorm. Drivers go through an extensive training program where they learn how to operate a vehicle. They then go through training and refresher courses, as well monthly meetings on safety and training.
A version of this article appeared in the Feb 24 issue of the Collegiate Times.
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Blacksburg has done a great job with the roads in recent years. Much faster at getting to small roads too.
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