Real SSP Info
But in the Richmond area VDOT to date does not offer a Safety Service Patrol you are looking for and probably never will.
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SSP contractor SERCO is active with 5 routes in the Richmond Area, the Central Region, reporting to the Regional TOC at Route 10 and I-95 ( the former Richmond-Petersburg Toll facility ). They have no STARS radios in their vehicles until VDOT Central Region decides to come up with $20,000 for new APX7500 series radios with Futurecom vehicle repeaters (DVRS), for each of up to about 30 SERCO trucks. They do have VDOT low band mobile radios in them and occasionally run them through the Chesterfield repeater with output of 47.30, but rarely heard anymore. Their normal communication is through Verizon Wireless push to talk. Most of the traffic you will hear on 47.30 in the Richmond area is DOT Maintenance from Chesterfield, much more active during and after weather events.
Southwest Region with SERCO vehicles runs on STARS DOTTAC2, which I saw inaccurately tagged or named someplace here, and is one of the busiest talk groups in the STARS system, some months over 20,000 transmissions. SSPs there report to the Transportation Southwest TOC which uses SyTech RIOS consoles and radio interface. They are not dispatched by the VSP Division 6. VDOT Southwest Region purchased $250,000 of STARS radios to put in the private contractor vehicles which are being used daily.
Northern Region SSP of course is also now run by SERCO under contract to VDOT. Some DOT SSP vehicles were purchased by SERCO. Nova DOT granted use of their 50+ STARS radios to SERCO and taxpayer-purchased another 20 complete STARS systems at a cost of over $300,000 to put in new contractor vehicles SERCO purchased or leased. SSPs in northern Virginia are dispatched by the VSP Division 7 and are found on the VSP Talk Groups Fairfax 1 or 2 normally. The VDOT NOVA element has upgraded their operation colocated at the Fairfax PSTOC over the past year and does now have DOT and STARS radios, but they are not often heard on assigned STARS Talk Group DOT TAC9 because they don't dispatch the SSP. Occasionally you may hear someone from the TOC staff call back to the TOC on STARS DOTTAC9 if coordinating an incident. They normally just monitor the VSP TGs using SyTech RIOS consoles. Another contractor Transurban for the toll lanes has the talk group DOT AUX7 assigned but again rarely used.
Eastern Region TOC / SSP are again privately owned SERCO vehicles with State radio property on board. They do not have STARS radios, but extensively and actively use the DOT repeater in Driver at the Public Broadcasting tower from an elevation around 600' AGL, output on 47.30 Mhz. It is very active. If you are in Tidewater and cannot hear that during most any weekday you probably do not have a good antenna for low band. A stubby rubber ducky that came with a hand held scanner will not cut it for low band, and you would be missing a lot on those frequencies. This is on a daily basis one of the most busy low band frequencies in the state. You can differentiate it from the Chesterfield 47.30 not only from different CTCSS tones but by the courtesy beep between transmissions, in Tidewater it is a long dash "T", and in Chesterfield a short dit "E". They do not have any plans to outfit or replace the 30+ SERCO vehicle radios with STARS.
Northwest Region TOC/SSP has purchased over $225,000 of STARS radios for their private contractor SERCO vehicles and those are being inventoried and programmed at the VSPHQ and will be installed in the contractor SERCO trucks over the next month or two. The Northwest Region does have a STARS radio in their TOC in Staunton connected to SyTech RIOS consoles. If they decide to dispatch the SSPs that will be heard on DOT TAC8. If they turn them over to VSP to dispatch those will be heard on the State Police Culpeper and Appomattox Talk Groups, but likely you can look for them on STARS DOTTAC8 by summer.
Hope this clears things up some. Those are the five DOT Regional Transportation Operations Centers and SSP activities. Have a listen, you've paid for it.