Angelica Ramos
Contributing Writer
MONTGOMERY COUNTY- The Montgomery County Board of Supervisors spoke with VDOT representative David Clark a VDOT representative about road related updates and requests for Montgomery County during their Nov. 13, 2024 meeting.
To begin his update, Clark addressed changes to last month’s VDOT plans due to hurricane clean up. Many parts of the county were affected by the latest hurricane that came through Southwestern Virginia, causing flooding on the roads and in residential neighborhoods, as well as debris to be swept into or fall onto the roads all throughout the NRV and the southwestern region of the state.
“Some of our maintenance plans for the month were a little bit changed due to some storm stuff, so we did spend a lot of time on hurricane repairs,” said Clark. “Debris removal was not as bad as it was in Giles County, but we still had to do a lot of work on Flatwoods, Allegheny Springs, Bradshaw Road, mostly debris kind of removal and some permanent repairs were needed on Bradshaw Road and on Cove Hollow Road. We were able to do some patching also along with that debris removal and did brush cutting in just a couple places, Willis Hollow, Woodrow and Pollard, which are near Christiansburg.”
Questions about what would be on next year’s VDOT plan for Montgomery County arose, with Supervisor Anthony Grafsky asking if Norse Run or Big Falls were on the VDOT plan or schedule to be repaired and refreshed. Clark said he’d review the schedule and add those streets if they weren’t on the schedule.
Speed was a major concern across the board for the Board of Supervisors. Speeding has been spoken about in past meetings not only from board members but from citizens as well. Supervisor Todd King asked Clark if there could be sign postings along Dry Valley Road as the speed limit there is supposed to be 45 miles per hour but there are not clear sign postings stating as such. Supervisor Derek Kitts advocated for a flashing light near the Radford Arsenal due to speeds in that area. Kitts also noted concerns about traffic and speed in the intersection of Peppers Ferry Road and Price’s Fork. Other supervisors expressed concern regarding speed limit postings in terms of signage and sign monitoring systems, like those in school zones that tell drivers what their speed is.
“A lot of times,” Clark explained, “the sheriff’s office will put those up, but we’ve been looking at one in Floyd, and we can, I’ll see if we can use either some of our safety money or the county’s. We get an extra allocation to do a lot of what we want, actually, we’re going to use a lot of the safety money to do the flashing signal at the Arsenal but these [speed monitoring systems] aren’t that expensive.”
Clark ended his update with telling the Board of Supervisors that he would send out emails after another review with maintenance staff to see if any other repairs or concerns need to be added to the list for VDOT.
