Smugglers’ Notch now includes chicanes to stop trucks
Fed up with truckers getting stuck on Smugglers’ Notch in Vermont, state officials have turned to a new plan to stop trucks from entering the segment of state Route 108.
Due to the snake-like feature of the road, state law prohibits single vehicles greater than 40 feet in length and combination vehicles greater than 45 feet in length from operating on Smugglers’ Notch. Despite plenty of signs indicating trucks are prohibited from entering, multiple truckers get stuck on the curvy, scenic road every year.
One trapped truck will shut down the highway for several hours as crews try to free the vehicle. The Vermont Agency of Transportation has dedicated an entire webpage to warning truckers about staying off Smugglers’ Notch.
Awareness campaigns and increasing fines have done very little to mitigate the problem. With signs and fines doing very little to solve the problem, transportation officials are turning to a new plan: chicanes.
A chicane is a structure that makes a road narrower, oftentimes creating an S-curve that forces traffic to slow down. In the case of Smugglers’ Notch, the chicanes are designed to stop trucks and force them to turn around.
“We’ve completed various traffic engineering analyses and discussed the options with our partners, and there was a strong consensus that the chicanes are the best option,” Todd Sears, deputy director of the Operations and Safety Bureau, said in a statement.
At first, the chicanes will be temporary, consisting of orange barrels and curbs installed on both ends of Smugglers’ Notch.
The Vermont Agency of Transportation will study the effect of the chicanes for at least one to two years. If they’re proven effective, officials may decide to make them permanent, which would involve designing them to look attractive and to blend into the roadway and landscape.
It’s already not going well. Smugglers’ Notch opened on May 14 with the new chicane system. On May 16, a trucker nearly got stuck after driving through the chicane. LL