The Roadway Maintenance Unit is a field unit with 6,000 employees that has a base of operation in each of the 100 counties. Their duties are to perform maintenance, construction, and emergency work on all of the 77,978 miles of primary, secondary, and urban state roads.
Maintenance activities include the maintenance of ditch back slopes, ditches, shoulders, unpaved roads, paved roadways, fences, vegetation growth, liter, school bus drivers, certain federal facilities, certain town roads, buildings, equipment, erosion facilities, etc.
The construction activities include the building of roadways, turn lanes, intersections, widening existing travelways, widening existing shoulder and ditch sections, bus parking and drives, firehouse and/or rescue driveways, and others.
A few activities associated with the building process include road survey, assisting in obtaining right-of-way, utility changes, roadway design, obtaining construction material, obtaining needed equipment, performing, clearing and grubbing, grading, draining, base construction, and paving.
Emergency work: if it is major, requires that 24-hour work be performed in two 12-hour shifts. This work includes clearing roads and right-of-ways of snow, ice, debris from hurricanes or tornadoes, repairing washouts and damaged structures from floods.
Minor emergency work includes hazardous spills, wreck cleanup, fallen obstructions within roadway, minor roadway failures, detours for failure, etc.
Most of this work is performed by maintenance employees working within a few feet of 2 to 40 ton vehicles traveling near 25 mph to 65 mph.
Submitted by Lex Kelly, PE, Chairman of the Maintenance Oversite Committee
