The 3.5-mile stretch of Vermont Route 108 that winds over a shoulder of Mount Mansfield makes for a picturesque drive characterized by dense forests and dramatic rock outcroppings.
However, for years, the Notch has been infamous for a less sightly vista: trucks and other big vehicles getting stuck on the narrow and curvy roadway, and crews spending hours removing them.
Vermont's Agency of Transportation has tried myriad strategies to prevent these stuckages over the years, from installing warning signs in English and in French, to using pictographs, to leveling hefty fines on truck drivers who ignore those warnings.
The number of incidents has generally decreased over that time, but VTrans tried something new this year that has resulted in only one stuckage all season. That's the lowest number on record. Workers installed barriers called chicanes on both sides of the Notch to head truckers off before they pass the point of no return.
Vermont Public's Mary Williams Engisch sat down with Todd Sears, deputy director of the Project Development Bureau at VTrans, to learn more about how the chicanes panned out this season. This interview was produced for the ear. We highly recommend listening to the audio. We’ve also provided a transcript, which has been edited for length and clarity.
Mary Williams Engisch: Tell us what these chicanes are, and what trucks encounter before they even reach the Notch.
Todd Sears: Well, the trucks encounter an awful lot, because as they're coming up the interstate, prior to even getting off on the exit to get to Route 108, we tell them that tractor trailers are not allowed on the Notch, don't trust your GPS, etc. So it's well-signed as they're making their way through. But as they get up on 108, what they'd see is signage that tells them that there is a chicane ahead of them.
The way that the chicanes are designed, they are such that if a tractor trailer does make it up that far and it encounters the chicane, it would not be able to make it through. So, it would be able to back up, and then turn around using one of the turnaround areas at the ski resorts, Stowe and Smugglers' Notch, and then they'd head back down the mountain.
Mary Williams Engisch: And it seems kind of obvious to folks who've driven the Notch road that a truck just would not make it through. But how did so many truckers find themselves even attempting that? Like, was it a miscommunication issue?
Todd Sears: I don't think it was a miscommunication issue. In past years, we have communicated very, very clearly that trucks weren't going to make it. Our signage was very clear, saying that you will get stuck. Do not attempt to drive through the Notch, and don't trust your your GPS — but they would try anyway.
I mean, it's a mystery. And I think that's part of, sort of the appeal of the story is because those of us that frequent this area and drive it, we do understand at a very visceral level that a tractor trailer isn't going to make it through there. And so, the fact that in past years, some have, it's kind of an eternal mystery.
Mary Williams Engisch: Only one stuckage this year. Remind us how much of a reduction that is from previous years.
Todd Sears: Prior to this year, so the past three seasons, we had five each. Prior to that, in 2020, that was an 11 stuckage year. I think we had 12 in 2014, I think we had 12 in 2017, so the numbers were quite high previously, and then starting in '21 it came down.
Mary Williams Engisch: We've been referring to chicanes — break that down for us. What exactly do they look like? How do they work?
Todd Sears: A chicane is essentially a curved through-way which emulates the topography of the curves up at the top of the Notch. We just bring that further down and expose the vehicle to that, to that very challenging topography, using cones and delineators and rubber curbing, so that they hit it lower on the mountain, rather than up in the Notch where they get stuck. So if they hit it lower on the mountain, they can stop, realize, oh, I'm not going to make it through here, back up, turn around and head back down the mountain.
Mary Williams Engisch: Who gets the prize for coming up with this particular method to try?
Todd Sears: In the early summer, I think it was of '21, we sort of convened the various stakeholders. So the resort owners, law enforcement up in the area, elected officials, the Lamoille Regional Planning Commission, AOT folks, a couple of state elected officials.
[We] sort of convened to discuss what we could do going forward. Day one was essentially spending a few hours discussing ideas that we've pondered. Then day two, we convened at Barnes Camp, up there on the Stowe side of the Notch, and then we all drove it.
We drove the Notch just to sort of get that on-the-ground familiarization together with it. Then we came back and we we sort of debriefed it, thinking that there was probably no one easy solution to this, but there might be little positive marginal gains made with a lot of different smaller things.
There were things like, let's take a harder look at vegetation to make sure that people can see all the signs. Let's look at placing our digital signs, those mobile signs that you see on the interstates, in different areas to give people more warning. Let's look at the clarity and the paint on our signs. Let's look at a whole host of things. And one of the things we came up with was conducting a scoping study to kind of take a look at all right, what actual engineering solutions could we come up with? What could we build? What could we think about building that would attenuate this problem? And that's really sort of the genesis of the chicanes.
We brought in design engineers, and we just kind of batted around ideas, soliciting the public for input. And this is the one that floated to the top, this chicane idea. And the reason we liked it was because we could experiment with it.
Mary Williams Engisch: How did this year's one stuckage actually happen? And did having the chicanes improve the extraction process?
Todd Sears: Having the chicanes didn't really improve the extraction process. I mean, the upside was it was not a tractor trailer. It was a bus. It was a local bus that that got stuck up there. We don't know exactly how it got up there. There's no chicane course on the downward side, so it could have gone up the downward side.
Mary Williams Engisch: The chicanes are meant to be temporary right now, going to collect some more years of data, and then what are next steps? Maybe permanent chicanes down the line?
Todd Sears: That's going to be a question that needs to be asked, I think, in future years, too, is once we do have the data — and it's going to be at least one more season that we'll collect on — and then from there, there is a process that we need to go through for all of our infrastructure projects that we do. There's a funding and financial component to it as well, but I can say that it will play out much better having good data behind it. And that's sort of the purpose of what we've done here this year, and attempt to do next year.
Mary Williams Engisch: Do you still wake up at night in a cold sweat thinking that there's going to be a tractor trailer to extract from the Notch or...
Todd Sears: No, it's not really a cold sweat. I was very, very disappointed in September when that bus got stuck up there. I consider the season a win for us, you know, for us, for everybody, not just AOT, but all of us that participated in this. I consider it to be a win of a season. But it sure would have been nice to have a big fat zero.
Mary Williams Engisch: Well, there's always next year for the big zero, right? We can all look forward to that.
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