Pike's roads stayed a mess for days after Stella

By Anya Tikka
MILFORD — Once again, after winter's end brought the worst storm of the season, motorists in Pike County struggled to get around.
This time, local roads — even major thoroughfares, like Routes 6 and 209, and Broad Street and Harford Street in Milford — remained a slushy mess for two days.
Winter Storm Stella on March 14 dumped up to three feet of snow in the area, presenting a true challenge for snow plows operators. But roads in neighboring New York and New Jersey were cleared quickly, unlike roads in Pike.
Many town road masters didn’t attend the Pike County Road Task force met on Thursday, March 16. They may have been out clearing the many roads still needing attention. Some private residential communities remained buried. Some homeowners told The Courier they were housebound until Friday.
No county road departmentsPart of the problem is that Pennsylvania counties don't have road departments, like those in New York and New Jersey. The result is a lack of coordinated effort. In the state's tiered system, state-owned roads, like Interstate 84, are a huge priority for the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT). Roads with less traffic are left for later.
“With the kind of storm that we have, we don’t have a bare pavement agreement with PennDOT," said Ken Thiele, PennDOT's Pike County manager. "We never had. It’s not expected to be bare.”
The roads that stayed snowy aren't used as much, he said.
“They’re mostly lower volume roads, what’s considered third-priority routes, and it’s acceptable to have snow on them," said Thiele. "As much as five inches of snow is a level of service that’s acceptable for third-priority routes, as much as it makes it difficult for people to drive. But it’s North East Pennsylvania. We get that type of snow.”
PennDOT's planThiele said PennDOT follows a regular plan after a major storm.
“We have a five-hour cycle of plowing of these roads," he said. "But when it’s snowing like these last storms, two inches an hour, it will put 10 inches of snow on that road. So we just try to stay up and plow as much as we can. Once it ends, we just plow until we can get the roads back to where they should be.”
Plowing the 810 miles of state road with the 19 trucks in Pike County will take a lot of time, he said. Each truck has to plow about 40 miles of snow.
PennDOT has winter municipal agreements with towns for maintenance, including plowing, and they know what their routes are, he said. In addition, PennDOT pays them to plow some of the state roads.
“I put down between 12,000 to 14,000 tons of salt in here in the county, and last year, it cost me $83 per ton," he said. "It’s expensive, but we try to plow it so that cars can drive.”
But it could be rough, he said — you can’t drive 50 miles on it.
Big or small, plows have problemsAnd the snowed-in private communities?
“No, we won’t be going to any of those developments," Thiele said. "There’s a liability issue there, and they have the money, so they can hire contractors.”
Homeowners' associations pay contractors to plow with dues collected from members. But some contractors didn't have plows big enough to handle a big storm like Stella, said Thiele. Even expensive state trucks couldn’t plow because of minor breakdowns or accidents.
Harrisburg can monitor state-of-the-art plows worth $230,000 through a computerized system. But these plows become unusable when parts break — even very simple, inexpensive parts.
“The windshield wipers cost about $10 or $15, and I can’t tell you how many trucks needed them," said Thiele. "Once the windshield wiper goes down, you can’t see, so you basically can’t plow until you replace the wipers. We do have them down in the shed, but you have to drive down there to get them. We’re trying to change that so they can change their own or the motor that runs it. You can’t put an expensive piece of machinery out until that’s fixed."
Harrisburg helped by sending five emergency trucks to put down salt the night before the storm. But Pike's largest single-day snow storm set a crippling record, said Theile. And in the days afterward, he said. the rock salt/calcium chloride mix didn’t get a chance to melt the snow because temperatures stayed low. And when during the storm the snow at the bottom started to melt, the new snow was coming down at such a rate it started to pack. The road was exposed to the cold air and froze. The plowing also sweeps the salt mixture away.
Thiele said Damascus got 32 inches of snow last week, Lake Wallenpaupack close to 30 inches, Milford 18, and Lords Valley 27. Some people have trouble driving through even five inches, depending on their vehicle, tires, and the distance they need to travel, he said.
“You just have to give yourself some time,” he said.
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