On Monday morning, snow fell on an already wet Highway 82, making the roadway slick. There were several accidents, which made for a long and dangerous commute for those heading up-valley.
The Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) is in charge of plowing Highway 82, and the agency dispatched extra snowplows to help remove snow.
The Roaring Fork Transportation Agency (RFTA) doesn’t have a special game plan for when wintery weather hits the valley’s roadways. The agency does have extra buses staged along the highway corridor, in order to accommodate passengers in the case of overflow.
Kent Blackmer, co-director of operations at RFTA, says when the weather is the worst, more people want to use the bus.
“It’s wacky! It’s not predictable sometimes when people are going to decide when they are going to jump on the bus,” he said.
Blackmer guesses that ridership increases by at least 25 percent on icy days, like Monday.
RFTA, he says, can’t control the weather and can’t go faster than the speed of traffic.
