House Transportation hears district maintenance overview, winter operations data

Ernie Patnaud, director of district maintenance, told the House Transportation Committee on Tuesday, Jan. 28 that his division runs nine districts with "a little over 500 employees" and outlined the work that makes up maintenance spending, including winter operations, bridge work, roadside cleanup and temporary bridge deployments.

The presentation included multi-year activity and resource figures that committee members said help put the agency budget in context. "Winter maintenance is the big one. It is about a fifth of our budget," Patnaud said, and his slides showed a five-year statewide salt-use average of 118,834 tons and a recent run of light winters that lowered the department’s winter-maintenance totals.

Patnaud highlighted several operational metrics: roughly 17,000 acres of roadside mowing; 1,529,245 lane miles plowed in the most recent year reported; about 535 tons of litter removed statewide; 628 bridges washed; and 5,488 feet of culvert replaced (roughly a mile). He said the division inspects 20% of the state’s culverts each year and uses that data to prioritize replacements and upgrades.

Committee members asked about guardrail repair and cost recovery. Patnaud said staff pursue crash-report–based recoveries from insurers and that, while he could not provide a recovery percentage in the meeting, "when we go after the money, we do get it back" a high proportion of the time. He also told the committee the agency has recently had insurers reach out to the department directly about claims.

Patnaud described the agency’s temporary-bridge inventory and deployment practice. "We currently have 30 temporary bridges installed throughout the state," he said, with 1,670 feet of temporary bridge deployed in several communities. He said the policy is to rent temporary bridges to towns for a low rate for up to five years while communities work to replace permanent structures, and noted that longer-term deployments require periodic maintenance: "They should be washed, and all the bolts and nuts need to be tightened once a year."

The presentation also touched on the rail-trail program, which Patnaud called "very, very popular" and cited a national travel publication’s inclusion of the state rail trail on a list of destinations. He said the agency’s conservation and stewardship section oversees environmental compliance for culvert and water-quality work and that roadside vegetation management follows a three-year rotation to protect pollinators.

Patnaud closed by inviting committee questions and turned the meeting to the Central Garage fleet presentation. The committee recessed remaining agency budget work for the following day’s session.