The Legislative Oversight Committee on the Department of Transportation Accountability met this afternoon.
The Department of Transportation provided an update on operations. Bridge ratings are improving. The NHS bridges with poor ratings are projected to be at 10.1 percent by the end of the year. The department is working to get the ratings below 10 percent. Maintenance from January 1 to July 28 includes 28,000 of mowing, 350,300 miles of ditching, 10,400 miles of patching, and 6,4000 miles of stabilization.
The Department’s new strategic planning is to provide a safe, efficient, and reliable multimodal transportation system to keep West Virginia moving. “People moving people forward.” The department has identified 18 areas of need for IT and geospatial technology, 10 areas of need for efficiency planning, and 14 findings from the BDO audit. Recent changes to the department include transferring into the WV Division of Personnel, creating transportation engineer categorization, and changing response to natural disasters.
Special projects discussed today included how cemetery roads are handled and the zipper merge. The DOH will handle state-owned roads, including those with cemeteries. The DOH generally treats non-state cemetery roads as private drives but may grade them if possible so people can access the cemeteries. The zipper merge is the recommended way to merge when two lanes turn into one for construction. The success of this merge is heavily dependent on drivers’ behavior. It has not been successful.
The WV Conservation Agency presented next on flood and hazard mitigation. The agency has been heavily involved in the clean-up of various natural disasters in the past few years, including flooding in Upshur and Lewis, tornado damage in Pleasants, flooding in Southern West Virginia in 2025, and flooding in Ohio in 2025.
The agency has received a $6 million grant for a flood hazard mitigation project. The objective is to provide cost-effective and sustainable activities to minimize the effects of flood damage and improve response, develop a plan of action, and produce plans and designs for future implementation. The grant is for McDowell, Mingo, Wayne, and Wyoming counties.
The Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation provided an overview of inmate road crew initiatives. The division has an agreement with the DOT, which has been renewed in some form since 2008. There are crews operating out of seven different facilities.
