Date:
Friday, May 26, 2006
Contact:
Dave McCormick, Asst. Regional Administrator, (206) 440-4656 (Shoreline)
Jamie Holter, WSDOT Communications, (206) 440-4472 (Shoreline)
SEATTLE – The Washington State Department of Transportation’s popular Incident Response Teams hit the streets in a newly expanded capacity just in time for the Memorial Day holiday. During the 2005-2006 legislative session, lawmakers added funds to put five new full-time patrols on the road. As of May 26, Memorial Day, WSDOT will have a total of 55 patrols statewide assisting stranded motorists and relieving congestion.
Drivers will see expanded service in Bellingham and Mt. Vernon/Burlington, in Federal Way and Auburn and on the US 2 Hewitt Avenue trestle Monday through Friday during peak commute times. We’ll add a new roving team in south King County, near the I-5/SR 18 interchange, and on I-5 in downtown Seattle on weekends. In short, IRT is on patrol during peak congestion periods and is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week to respond to highway problems.
“Clearing roads and helping drivers during the peak commute times keeps traffic moving,” said Dave McCormick, WSDOT Regional Administrator for Maintenance and Operations. “The evidence is overwhelming. These teams work.”
WSDOT stations Incident Response Teams in congested highway corridors, allowing the teams to quickly move in and clear blocking vehicles, address spills and collisions, and provide traffic control for Washington State Patrol troopers. Clearing vehicles quickly restores traffic flow and improves highway safety.
Drivers have come to rely on these “angels of the highway.” Incident Response Team drivers provide gasoline, change flat tires, and complete minor repairs to get drivers moving again. They also clear potentially deadly debris from our state highways. Not a week goes by that WSDOT doesn’t get a positive comment about these workers who helped drivers out of a jam.
WSDOT is adding the new teams to rapidly growing Mt. Vernon and Bellingham and is adding teams to the congested US 2 trestle and to South King County to patrol the critical Highway 18 freight corridor.
“We put the teams where the traffic is, where the collisions are, at chokepoints and bridges where shoulders aren’t wide enough to handle a broken down vehicle without affecting traffic,” said McCormick.
The numbers tell the story. Each month, our drivers respond to more than 4,000 incidents.
Just this week, U.S. Secretary of Transportation Norm Mineta released a six-point plan for managing congestion. Key among those proposals is improved operational and technological systems which include more roving response teams. “We are right in line with what the US Secretary of Transportation is asking for,” said Doug MacDonald, Washington State Secretary of Transportation. “His data shows what our data shows – traffic incidents cause 50% of highway congestion and these incident response teams clear those incidents.”
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