The safe bets in roadside maintenance

Though they may be an inconvenience to motorists, those familiar orange traffic cones, arrow boards and orange speed limit signs are a matter of life and death to some people.

Safety in roadside maintenance is serious business for the crews working inches away from speeding traffic, falling tree limbs and dangerous pesticides. There are a number of precautions maintenance crews can Cake to help reduce the risk of injury both to themselves and to the public.

TRAFFIC CONTROL

As in all work that involves putting crews in or close to streets and highways, traffic control is a major concern for roadside maintenance. In this area, safety precautions overlap with those associated with construction zones, but maintenance crews often are not actually working in the road and generally do not set up long-term work zones.

“Basically it’s almost impossible to keep the traffic slowed down,” says Les Chance, assistant director for streets and highways, Broward County, Fla. “When we’re there for a long time we post some 25 mph advisories, we put cones, we’ve ordered some portable signs. [The traffic] is too fast for conditions, basically.”

Advisory “Reduced Speed” signs are not enforceable by police and, according to an article on work zone safety in the Feb. 1995 issue of Better Roads, a 20-percent drop in speeds is the most crew supervisors should expect. For long-term efforts, maintenance directors might consider going through political channels for a regulatory reduced speed limit in the work zone or, if they have the authority, just do it themselves

“Most people use advisory signs because they’re caught up in bureaucracy,” says Jim Sparks, deputy street transportation director for the city of Phoenix. “Some attorneys will tell you that only elected officials can change regulatory speed limits. But in a zone that’s changing from day to day, you don’t have time to do the paperwork and run speed limit changes through city council. You’ve got to have the authority to do it, and you’ve got to assume the responsibility to do it right.”

The Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD), published by the Federal Highway Administration, provides standards for traffic control in all situations and these guidelines have been adopted in legislation by most states. Though most of Part VI of MUTCD, which deals with work zones, pertains to construction zones, the guidelines and practices are relevant to temporary traffic control as well.

Part VI of MUTCD was amended last year in the following areas:

* Identification of the four components of a temporary traffic control zone. (Advance Warning Area, Transition Area, Activity Area and Termination Area)

* Specification for sign placement and colors.

* Requirements related to training, worker clothing, barriers, speed controls, enforcement personnel, lighting, special devices, public information and road closure.

* Selection of proper traffic control devices and methods.

Governments and organizations are trying other methods to appeal directly to motorists to drive cautiously in work zones. The American Association of State and Highway Transportation Officials and some states conduct roadside advertising campaigns, urging motorists to slow down. Eight states — Delaware, Iowa, Kansas, Maryland, New Jersey, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Virginia — have doubled the fines for traffic violations occuring within a work zone.

Training is an essential component of effective traffic control. The American Traffic Safety Services Association (ATSSA) conducts training courses nationwide and provides certification to traffic control technicians. ATSSA says one-half of injuries in work zones happen to workers with less than one year experience. The organization has trained more than 13,000 individuals and certified more than 4,000.

John McMullin, membership services coordinator for the American Public Works Association, is a strong advocate for the ATSSA courses. “One of the guys I ride the bus home with is with the Kansas City [Mo.] traffic division. His boss recently sent him to an ATSSA course and now he’s got religion. We need more of that, really.”

In Phoenix, Sparks’ department conducts periodic slide show training sessions for other city departments and Phoenix utility companies. He says this is his biggest problem since he has no permanent training staff.

“Whoever’s teaching is not doing the rest of their job,” he says. “Periodically we will find people stopped in traffic with improper barricading. We can and do boot them out of the street and inform them of how they’re supposed to do it, but it’s too late then because they’ve already done it.”

Chance says his supervisors in Broward County are required to have a monthly safety meeting with their crews and turn a report in to the safety coordinator.

GRASS CUTTING AND TREE TRIMMING

Many safety precautions involved in normal grounds upkeep are simply common sense. Workers should be instructed on the proper use of mowers, chainsaws, etc., and should wear safety equipment, such as hardhats, safety goggles and gloves, at all times.

Nagging, of course, helps drive the point home. “We emphasize safety pretty strongly,” says Joe Lee, deputy director of construction and maintenance for the DeKalb County (Ga.) Roads and Drainage Department. “We try to constantly remind our guys about safety issues, and hopefully they’re out there paying attention.”

As with traffic control, training is important as well. Steve Bylina, deputy commissioner for the Chicago Bureau of Forestry, which maintains more than a half-million trees throughout the city, says all his workers undergo periodic, “very intense” training programs. His department has the largest number of arborists certified by the International Society of Arborculture of any municipality in the country, with over a hundred workers holding certification.

Injuries do happen, but “it’s just a dangerous job sometimes,” Bylina says. “We always have a ground person to watch out for passing cars, and we set up cones, men at work signs, barricades.” He says his best workers are enlisted to train the others, rotating with each crew. The most serious injury he can remember happened two years ago when a worker was struck by a falling tree limb that fractured his pelvis.

Objects thrown from mowers into the roadway or at workers also can be dangerous. Herbert Humphrey, construction manager for the Fulton County, Ga., Department of Transportation, says his workers have stopped using bush hogs in certain areas because of dangerous flying debris. “Our first priority is to establish proper traffic controls, and we encourage our employees to be cautious,” says.

DeKalb County’s Lee says once or twice a year flying objects from one of his crews will strike a passing car, although he cannot recall a driver being hit. He says his workers are trained in-house in the use of all equipment.

One way to cut down on the risks to passing motorists is to work when they are not there. Dallas, Tex., Park Maintenance Supervisor Reuben Naranjo says his department is allowed to work on medians only between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m., avoiding morning and afternoon drivetime. “Most of the rush hour is over or hasn’t started yet,” he says. “[Our workers] are coached on all the equipment they use, from big mowers to weedeaters, and we have monthly safety meetings. We have continuing education credits to keep them briefed on the newest methods.”

Naranjo says most of the injuries in his department are due to heavy lifting and contact with toxic vegetation, such as poison ivy.

PESTICIDE USE

Pesticide and herbicide use is highly regulated by both federal and state governments. All states require applicators to be extensively trained and licensed in specific areas of pesticide use. For example, the Texas Deparment of Agriculture (TDA) lists 10 categories of pesticide use, some of which are further broken down into subcategories.

The Environmental Protection Agency also has 10 categories for pesticide use, one of which is right-of-way pest control, comprised of highway, railroad and utility and pipeline right-of-way subcategories

To be certified by the TDA, applicators must undergo training either through the departments extension services, such as Texas A&M University, or private vendors. After completing the training course, applicators must pass three exams — a herbicide exam, an equipment exam and a laws and regulation exam.

Steve Prather, a vegetation specialist for the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT), says the department has more than 1,200 certified herbicide applicators across the state. Crews undergo periodic training in safety and application procedures and, even though most of the chemicals they use are relatively safe and do not require licensed applicators, Prather says workers in each of TxDOT’s 25 districts are licensed anyway every month.

“We think it’s to their advantage, just to know what the products are and what they’re dealing with,” Prather says. He adds the department works with vendors and does its own research to find the lowest possible concentration of product they can use to accomplish what they need to do.

Prather says crews also have morning meetings at least two or three times a week to discuss what the objective of a job is, the target species and how the process will work. Workers wear gloves and long-sleeved shirts, which he says cut down on about 90 percent of exposure, and are provided with respirators, though most people choose not to use them.

“We suggest they do not put themselves in any situation where they will get drift or mist on them,” Prather says, “and if they’re in that situation they need to be out of it and doing something else.”

In Broward County, the water management division is charged with spraying herbicides along and in the county’s canals to control aquatic weeds. The weeds, many of them exotic imports, can choke the flow of water through the canals, inhibiting drainage and aquifer recharge, and also killing much of the animal life and vegetation in the canals.

The county only uses federal- and state-approved herbicides, with detailed labeling describing the toxicity of the herbicide, usage and emergency procedures. Roy Reynolds, director of the water management division, says his department does not like to use dangerous herbicides, so most of what it uses is not extremely hazardous.

Herbicide crews wear long-sleeved shirts, spray masks, hats and gloves, and have the option of wearing a full-body, water-repellant suit. However, Reynolds says the relative safety of the chemicals combined with the Florida heat make the rain suits an unpopular and uncommon precaution. Workers also go through “just about every training course we can find,” he says.

“We require our crew chiefs to be licensed by the state as herbicide applicators,” he says, “and to have that certification, they need several hours of training and must to keep that training updated every year. We recently got all our crew people licensed by the state, even the ones who don’t have to be.”

Reynolds says he cannot remember anyone being injured spraying herbicides, though his department sometimes gets complaints from residents claiming they are allergic to the chemicals. However, he says he gets more complaints when they do not spray.

Much if the work involved in roadside maintenance can be dangerous and there may be no way to ensure motorists slow down or trees fall the right way, but a little caution and common sense will go a long way toward preventing serious injury.