State transportation secretary touts DOH progress across W.Va. – WV MetroNews

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — State Transportation Secretary Jimmy Wriston said it’s an exciting time to be part of the West Virginia Division of Highways. He detailed the ongoing work happening on the state’s roads in last week’s briefing with Governor Jim Justice.

During the update, Wriston credited the Governor’s leadership for a lot of forward momentum by the agency.

“Today we have a 10-year bridge program for rehab and replacements. We treat our pavement the same way. We have a 10-year interstate paving program, a 10-year U.S. Route paving program, and a 10-year West Virginia Route program and we’re still working hard on those secondary roads that are a lot more important to a lot more people,” he explained.

Wriston said due to the Roads to Prosperity Program initiated by the Governor during his first year in office, the agency has been able to make vast repairs to the state’s transportation infrastructure and to adjust the culture, so decisions are made now and going forward with data and based on needs and scheduled maintenance. He said that’s made possible because they’ve been able to catch up on a back log of deferred maintenance.

“In District 4 which includes Doddridge, Harrison, Monongalia, Preston, and Taylor Counties, we paved nearly 115 miles of mostly rural roads in that district done mostly by our own in-house pavers,” said Wriston.

Wriston said 1,200 Roads to Prosperity projects have been complete and 9,000 miles of roads have been paved since 2017.

Additional funding for the DOH has enabled the agency to upgrade equipment and buy new machinery to get more accomplished. One of those purchases was a large drill for each highway district. Wriston said it’s a decision which paid off.

“At one time I reported to the Legislature there were 2,300 known slips and slides in the state. Today that number is under 1,000. We have completed 1,500 slip and slide projects in the last few years,” said Wriston.

He expected the trend would continue. He added in his report it doesn’t stop with road maintenance, but also extended to new road development, all under the Roads to Prosperity umbrella.

“Today we have over $4 Billion of active, contract construction projects going on all across West Virginia,” he said.

He added that number will grow as projects are completed and designs for new projects come online.