Talking Transportation: Connecticut’s Winter Warriors of Road and Rail

I used to think March 1st meant spring was around the corner. This year it means wniter is just getting warmed up. Last week’s blizzard followed by mid-week “flurries” convince me that May is a better hoped-for date for a reprieve.

Meantime let’s give credit to all those who kept us moving in the worst of what winter has had to throw at us.

ON THE RAILS: While some railroads (like NJ Transit and the LIRR) “temporarily suspended most service” (i.e. shut down) before or during the blizzard, Metro-North kept chugging along, albeit on a reduced schedule. Amtrak kept the Northeast Corridor technically open which in a blizzard counts as a small miracle. Understandably, people were warned to stay off the roads, but if travel was absolutely necessary the train could get you there. So thank you to the crews that worked tirelessly to keep the station platforms plowed, track switches cleared and the trains still running.

ON THE ROADS: Here’s where the miracles happened. The faceless teams of plow operators and salters worked night and day reopening our interstates as quickly as possible. Even on Wednesday, with another brief storm, my drive along the coast on I-95 from Fairfield County to Rhode Island appeared clean and well plowed. I saw several conga-lines of plows clearing the travel lanes and shoulders and using bucket and dump trucks to remove what remained.

Where does all that snow go? Most is what they call “toss snow,” literally tossed off to the side of the road. On bridges and overpasses, giant snow blowers are called into action. In cities like Hartford larger amount of snow are trucked to state property to await melting.

But there was so much snow to be removed this week that Connecticut’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) temporarily allowed dumping in local rivers and even Long Island Sound. That’s despite the fact that plowed snow carries road salt (chlorides), sand, oil, tire particles, litter, fertilizers and other contaminants, which can degrade water quality, harm fish and aquatic life.

Clean water is important. So is clean pavement.

CDOT uses salt brine to pretreat our highways, roughly the equivalent of 100 pounds of salt per lane-mile in each direction, lowering the freezing temperature of water to – 6 degrees F. Years ago they used sand but abandoned that for environmental reasons. Then come the plows and salt trucks.

Understandably, rock salt is in short supply this year so it now costs over $80 a ton. Most comes from Morton Salt’s mines in upstate NY while some is also imported by the shipload from as far away as Chile.

In some states, fracking brine (euphemistically called “produced water”) is used for highway treatment. But that’s banned in Connecticut due to its residual radioactivity.

All of these salty corrosives aren’t good for your car, damaging the frame, underbody, brake and fuel lines, suspension components and fasteners. Rust never sleeps. That makes washing your vehicle after a storm even more important … after, of course, removing the ice and snow atop your vehicle lest it fly off at high speed endangering other drivers.

CDOT had almost 650 trucks clearing 10,000+ lane miles of state highways during the blizzard. In your town or city, your local DPW cleared the local roads. And in shoreline communities like Madison, the 22” of heavy, wet snow was still being cleared days after the storm.

So effective were the CDOT crews that Governor Ned Lamont later dispatched CDOT personnel (drivers and mechanics) and equipment to Rhode Island and Massachusetts to assist in their clean-up.

Thank you also to neighbors who didn’t park their cars on local roads impeding plowing and then cleared their sidewalks, incentivized by local ordinances.

And then there are the private plow operators whose long hours during and after the blizzard have made for a lucrative if exhausting period of work.

The Winter of ‘26 isn’t done with us yet. The crews will keep plowing. We’ll keep salting. And come April we’ll all complain about potholes instead.

About the Author: Jim Cameron is the founder of the Commuter Action Group and advocates for Connecticut rail riders. His column is published by several publications in the state. ”Talking Transportation” won first place in the general column/commentary category in the 2024 Connecticut Society of Professional Journalists Excellence in Journalism Contest.