By Stephen Smoot
For many years, Pendleton County officials have pleaded with the federal and state governments to work to resolve the dangerous stretches of U.S. Route 33 on Allegheny Mountain. Six years after being promised a $17.5 million solution by the state, officials still fear that the West Virginia Division of Highways is not doing enough to correct what has been called “the most dangerous little stretch of roadway in West Virginia.”
In 2017, Governor Jim Justice outlined his Roads to Prosperity program. The state sold approximately $1.6 billion worth of bonds to pay for road improvement, maintenance, and safety projects across the state.
Prior to approval, the Pendleton County side of U.S. Route 33 on Allegheny Mountain was assigned a $17.5 million project to construct a quarter mile truck escape ramp. The division of highways categorized it as a “not groupable” bond project and was placed in the same section as “resurfacing projects.” The funding would have been entirely from the State, “funded through the Roads to Prosperity Constitutional Amendment allowing the issuance of up to $1.6 million of General Obligation bonds.”
The proposed project would have included a “catch net” system already used in Wyoming, Utah, and other western mountain states. Catch net systems use a series of nets to slow the momentum of and stop runaway trucks or other large vehicles. According to the Jackson Hole News and Guide in Wyoming, tests showed that the system had no trouble slowing and stopping a 60,000-pound truck traveling at 60 miles an hour.
Catch net systems are designed to stop a 90,000-pound vehicle traveling at 90 miles per hour. They are based on the same technology used to stop fighter jets landing on aircraft carriers.
The DOH by August of 2017 had decided against the catch net system. James Rossi, state department of transportation commissioner, later stated that their engineers had discovered a failure in the system and chose to not implement it. The Roads to Prosperity list showed the U.S. Route 33 project as a $16 million climbing lane, but that project idea was also abandoned.
Currently, the DOH is installing a TL-5 barrier system for a cost of between $600,000 and $700,000. Rossi told the Pendleton County Commission that “what is proposed now, though it is greatly reduced in price, is better than what we now have.” Gillespie fears that the barriers, which rely on “scrubbing,” or the truck running against it, using friction to slow its progress, will be insufficient to stop runaway trucks on the mountain.
More importantly, only one of the mountain’s three known dangerous curves will receive the barrier at this time. The barrier will also be positioned uphill from where a number of vehicles lose control.
Gillespie, starting at the beginning of the year, also warned the DOH about the placement of temporary traffic lights to control traffic during construction. Where the traffic light is placed on the downhill grade, as Gillespie explains, creates a potentially dangerous situation where trucks could struggle to stop. Those who cannot stop can only divert into the westbound uphill lane.
Additionally, he noted that the DOH failed to place sensors on the lights on the eastbound/downhill lanes that would allow them to default to green when no opposing traffic was present. This creates significant delays in traffic movement.
