New technology will drive the city of Cincinnati's response to the next winter storm.
City officials on Thursday announced new plans and strategies for snow removal, promising to do better than the highly criticized performance during a major winter storm in January.
"Last year was not good enough, and both the administration, the Council and I agree on that," Mayor Aftab Pureval said. "We have made significant investments in order to make sure that we improve our services. To the extent we get another historic snowfall, we'll be ready."
The former director of the Department of Public Services, Jerry Wilkerson, retired in September after seven years leading the department. City Manager Sheryl Long says she did not ask him to retire; Wilkerson has helped with the transition to the department's new director, Mark Riley. Riley has worked in public services and water utilities in several Ohio cities, most recently in Reynoldsburg near Columbus.
"I'm taking a proactive approach of looking forward as a department," Riley told reporters.
He says DPS will start using a de-icing product called BeatHeat, which is what the Ohio Department of Transportation uses to treat highways.
Snow plow routes and map
Snow plows are now equipped with a tablet to display the assigned route. That's a huge upgrade from the previous paper binder system.
Long says the tablets also mean residents can keep track of progress more accurately.
"Drivers will use the tablet to update street statuses, whether it's being pretreated, salted, or plowed. They can also report road conditions and obstacles like construction or parked vehicles, which will help keep other drivers safe and help us collect data about what's happening on the streets," Long said. "All of this is automatically transmitted to the DPS dispatch center so they can monitor progress and update route assignments, and this same data is going to feed the new and improved snow plow tracker."
The previous snow plow tracker was only used as a public information tool, not as a way to coordinate snow plow routes. The public map showed which streets a truck had driven on, but not whether street had been plowed or salted. It was often glitchy, as well, showing trucks driving through buildings or other impossible routes.
Note: the new snow plow tracker is temporarily available on Cincy Insights only as an example. It will be re-set Oct. 31 and will be available during winter weather events in the future.
Weather stations pilot
The city also will pilot the use of 10 weather stations, which are solar-powered cameras with sensors that can provide visuals of road conditions.
"These weather stations will provide us the opportunity to see the depth of the snow, be able to monitor the road temperatures, but most importantly, it'll provide us opportunity to have a visual of the roads," Riley said.
Although it's a pilot for now, Riley says he's confident this technology will be beneficial because it's been successful in other Ohio cities.
Staffing and trucks
Riley says the city has 80 plow drivers. There's overlap with other city positions, like the crews that fill potholes.
Long says more city employees with a CDL in other departments are being trained to operate the snow plows. A memorandum of understanding is under negotiations with the unions for pulling those employees during winter weather.
"If it is an all-heck, hands-on-deck event, the expectation [is] for everybody to be on the road; it is mandatory," Long said.
Six new snow plows are on order but will not arrive for at least a year-and-a-half.
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