On a recent afternoon along a stretch of N. Randolph Street in Ballston, a periodic thump-thump could be heard as drivers ran over a series of ruts in the road.
Some swerve or slow down substantially at an especially deep indentation midway down the 1100 block of N. Randolph Street. This is one of several dips between Washington Blvd and Fairfax Drive resulting from utility cuts during service line replacements.
Further down the road, at the intersection with Fairfax Drive, Washington Gas — the utility company responsible for the job — has filled in a rough spot in response to a resident’s complaints.
The patch, however, is higher than the surrounding road. Vehicles visibly rise and fall as they drive over it.
A local resident who asked to remain anonymous has been emailing county officials since January attempting to bring improvements to the street.
The county has contacted Washington Gas, but Arlington — despite being ultimately responsible for the street — doesn’t control how quickly the repairs get done, Communications Specialist Kiara Candelaria Nieves told ARLnow.
“Water, Sewer and Streets has no role in enforcement,” she said. “There is also no way to calculate the average time to close a request from when it’s received to when the work is completed by the utility.”
People can submit service requests through the county’s website. But again, when the county receives this feedback, it will simply “relay the information to the responsible utility.”
“Water, Sewer and Streets will deem a request ‘closed’ once it has notified the private utility, but the timeline for work completion is up to the utility or its contractors,” Candelaria Nieves said.
As a utility company, Washington Gas operates under a different set of agreed-upon rules with the county — including any potential consequences for incomplete work — than those of a contractor, she said. Unlike with a contractor, the county cannot just terminate a contract if Washington Gas is slow to fix road issues.
Back on N. Randolph Street, county staff told our tipster that the bump at the Fairfax intersection doesn’t appear to be permanent “and may just be this way during utility repairs.” In the end, it’s the utility company’s job, not the county’s, to fix the ruts, the resident was told.
So for now, the swerving and rumbling will continue.