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Overnight Maintenance Crew Keeps Daytime Traffic Moving  When the sun goes down, the task of maintaining the NTTA’s many roads does not draw to a close. Instead, the upkeep continues as the Maintenance Department’s overnight crew aims to keep travel safe and smooth for motorists at all times of the day or night.
Working from 8:30 p.m. to 7 a.m. Sundays through Thursdays, the seven-member crew repairs guardrails, sweeps roadways, cleans bridge expansion joints and other maintenance-related jobs when traffic is the least impacted and crews are safer.
“A majority of our work requires lane closures for safety reasons,” said team supervisor Joseph Steinocher. “We have improved mobility by scheduling and planning major lane and road closures during off-peak hours when traffic is the lightest. This makes the daytime traffic flow faster and smoother through the roadway system and improves customer satisfaction.”
By working at night, Steinocher and his group can safely work on projects and minimize travel interruptions to motorists. His team can easily tackle bigger projects at night on ramps and roads that have less traffic as opposed to working in the daytime around heavy, fast-moving traffic, he added. With this crew, the NTTA has the manpower to work major emergency incidents that occur at night.
“We can mobilize quicker than having to get other day crew members to come work a scene, since we will already be on the roadways,” Steinocher said.
The night crew also lessens the need for Maintenance crews to work a long shift or even a double shift and reduces the costs of overtime.
With the extremely hot daytime temperatures this summer, crew members like Grant Sedberry, a senior maintenance technician, said it was nice to work at night when temperatures were cooler. In addition to repairing approximately 2,000 feet of damaged guardrail this summer, the crew also tackled a number of projects, such as fixing potholes, replacing pavement markers and cleaning bridge expansion joints, and assisting other departments.
The idea of a night crew is nothing new. Eric Hemphill, interim director of maintenance, said NTTA deployed a nighttime shift several years ago and decided to reinstate a night crew in an effort to reduce the need for lane closures during the day.
“The NTTA realized we cannot continue to do as many lane closures in the daytime as we have in the past because of the increased daytime traffic on our System,” Hemphill said. “The goal is to provide a service to our customers by moving some work to the night shift crew.”
As the night crew continues to be a driving force in the upkeep of the Authority’s roadways, Doyle Graham, roadway manager of the Sam Rayburn Tollway, said the maintenance department will review the group’s success and will look for possible improvements as well.
“We believe this is a win-win-win situation for our customers, our crews and for the Authority,” Graham said. “With the night crew, we will be able to get major projects accomplished in a shorter amount of time.”
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