Vermont’s Notch Road takes drivers up Mount Mansfield between Jeffersonville and Stowe. As you approach the apex of the mountain, the road narrows and boulders jut out along the narrow winding road. Signs are posted in the valley that tractor trailers are prohibited because they simply cannot make it through. Yet each year several get stuck and have to be towed out. The Vermont Agency of Transportation has coined a term for the problem: “stuckage.” A number of efforts have occurred to alleviate the problem including a survey of the road and fines.
In an interview conducted before a more acute crisis — when storms caused intense flooding across the state — Vermont Agency of Transportation Operations and Safety Bureau Deputy Director Todd Sears, considered the agency’s expert on “stuckages,” tells WAMC North Country Bureau Chief Pat Bradley trucks tend to get stuck due to the rocks, road curves and driver inattention to warnings:
The geometry up there on the top of the Notch is very challenging for large trucks and that's why they get stuck because the angles of the road as they do the switchbacks back and forth are very, very tight. And there are a few areas where there are rough rock outcroppings which tend to challenge them even more. And so frequently when these happen, you see trucks get stuck on the, against the rocks or along the side of the road. But it's primarily because of the geometry, the angles of the road, up there.
Are the angles such that it's more problematic when they enter the Notch on one side than from the other, or is it both sides?
Both sides. It's approximately evenly split between north and southbound.
How do you get a semi unstuck and out of the Notch?
it really depends on how stuck they are. Sometimes it's easy where they just, they realize right away where they can't make a turn and they just kind of stop and then they have to be backed down, usually with law enforcement being involved. And they can just sort of give them a ground guide and back them out. Which is challenging in and of itself. But that's an easier problem than when they are really stuck, in which case sometimes would need to bring up, or they would need to bring up, a large tow truck essentially with a big winch and a lot of power that can pull them off of, say, the rocks where they're stuck. So it really depends, various kinds of situational.
Have you ever had to disconnect the cab from the trailer to get them out?
I'm sure it has happened. I'm not the one that does it. But I'm sure that that has happened just in order to give a little bit more flexibility. It doesn't happen all the time. But I'm sure it has happened in the past.
I know that this has been happening for a few years. Is it increasing?
It's absolutely not increasing. It's getting better. It's actually seen about a 40% decrease over the five year average for the past two years of stuckages. For the past two years, we've had five stuckages per year. So that was last year and the year before there were total of five for the season. Whereas prior to that it would frequently be anywhere from nine to 12 stuckages. So it's actually decreasing, not increasing.
What's been done to prevent semis from traveling through the Notch?
Several things. One of the things is doing press like this, talking to our journalist partners so that we can get the word out and sensitize people. So outreach is one part of it. We have increased law enforcement patrols up there. We have been working closely with our partners in the Agency of Natural Resources, who actually own Smugglers Notch Park, or they manage Smugglers Notch Park, the state park up there. And so some of those park employees have been very, very vigilant and have been able to stop tractor trailers on the way up before they can even get up there and warn them off. So that's been effective. We did a statute change where we changed the words of the law so it was more specific than it had been about who was allowed and who was not. So we did a lot of very, very high fidelity engineering of that geometry of the roads up there so that we can determine specific sizes that were forbidden. And so we reflected that in statute. We also went through and looked at our entire sign architecture there and just looked at the clarity of the signs, the positioning of the signs, whether they were being impeded by trees or bushes. So we looked at all of that and reoriented that. So that's what we have done. And what we're doing now and hope to get done this season is we're installing what's called a chicane course. Essentially it is a set of delineators and barrels that mimic the angles that would be found at the top of the Notch, but bringing them down lower on the mountain so that a tractor or trailer would encounter those before they could even get up in the Notch. And so we're currently in the process of procuring materials to do that. And we're optimistic that that's going to be a successful solution as well and will help out quite a bit. But we don't have that installed yet. But that's something that we're anticipating the season.
So I take it that would not affect regular vehicle traffic. It would just impact the tractor trailers.
Correct. It might slightly slow down the regular vehicle traffic but nothing significant. No.
I've often heard that drivers, the tractor trailer drivers, are ignoring warnings because they're using GPS and they're using basically the non-semi professional’s GPS. I guess there's like two different versions of it. Have you gotten any feedback on why they ignore the local warnings and go with the GPS that they have not thinking that gee, the locals ought to know what's going on here?
The first thing that you said is right. So the way that we think about GPS is there’s kind of your standard GPS like Apple Maps or Google Maps, the great services that we find on our on our phones. And that's what the majority of people that drive anywhere use. But there are freight specific GPS systems that are just specifically designed for freight drivers, for tractor trailer drivers. And with those, because it's such a very specific user group, warnings about tight areas like the Notch, and there are plenty of other examples and other states, those are very, very effective for those trade specific GPS systems. It's when the drivers are using the standard off-of-the-smartphone apps that they get into trouble. And as to why they ignore our signs, even though the signs say your GPS is wrong, I really wish I had a good explanation for you. I don't. Maybe it's a matter of trust. They trust the GPS apps more than they trust our signage system. Maybe they see it as a challenge. I don't know. I can't get inside their heads. But it is a, it's a remarkable phenomenon. And I wish people would just monitor the signs because the detour bypassing the mountain to get from one community say Stowe to Jeffersonville, for example, it's really only going to cost you about 10 or 12 minutes total to go that way, vise up and over the mountain. So yeah, I don't know. I don't know. But that's part of part of the challenge.
Do you know too if word is spreading for truckers that you know are in Vermont regularly, or maybe even semi regularly, that there's a fine if they do go through, try to go through the Notch and get stuck?
I'm not really positive about when the fine structure came in. But to answer your question, yes, we're hoping it does but we don't really have a way of monitoring to what extent the word is getting out.
Do you know how unique this situation is In Vermont? Obviously, we have other states mostly out west that have mountainous and rugged terrain and stuff. How unique is this situation?
That's a really good question and the honest answer is I don't know. I suspect that it's not that unique. I mean, there are, it's not just a tractor trailer strikes on challenging road geometry like this is. There are also covered bridge strikes that happen throughout New England from time to time with various vehicles. But West Virginia, there are other rural, mountainous, mountainous states that I'm sure have very, very similar challenges.
And I know we mentioned that truckers get fined if they do get stuck in Vermont. But getting a semi out of the Notch, what's the cost to Vermont?
Well, there’s costs just for the aggravation because it's not, for say, a huge safety issue because people are just stuck. So there's a great deal of frustration so they can't get to where they need to go. They're sitting there. They're idling. So there's a cost to it. There are different ways to estimate this but roughly $6,000 an hour or so. And in addition to that there is the cost that the operator needs to pay for towing services, for example, to extricate themselves from the situation. So it depends on how long it lasts. It depends on a lot of things. There is a cost and it's not insignificant.
I've always been curious as to how you get them back down once they've been stuck. It just sounds like it's a very slow...
Yep. It's slow and it takes some time and it takes deliberate effort.
All vehicles longer than 40 feet are prohibited from the Notch Road including busses and recreational vehicles. The Agency of Transportation says an average of 8.6 tractor trailers became stuck on the road between 2009 and 2021 but the number decreased in 2021 to five. State fines begin at $1,000 and can run over $4,000.
