Rising expectations: Even in South, road crews know citizens demand speedy snow and ice removal

Posted by citiYellow

Saturday, 21 January 2012 07:31

(ARA) - In Georgia, people used to understand that heavy snow was a relative rarity and removing it would take time for Sun Belt transportation agencies ill-equipped to deal with more than a few inches.

That has changed, not only in Atlanta but in other areas of the South where people now expect roads to be swiftly cleared of ice and snow. In northern climates, expectations have always been high, but are getting even higher as citizens realize impassable roads are not only a safety concern but an economic worry.

That realization is backed up by solid research. Just one day of impassable roads can cost a state hundreds of millions of dollars, according to an economic impact study conducted by IHS Global Insight for the American Highway Users Alliance. The potential loss far outweighs an investment in road salt, snow plows and other resources.

The Atlanta area got a painful demonstration last January when a snowstorm featuring a nasty coating of ice shut down roads and businesses in the metro region for five days.

"We generally get one like that every 15 years or so," says Bill Shelton, road maintenance division manager of suburban Cobb County. "That has prompted us to buy more equipment and to prepare more for an event like that. I use the analogy of buying insurance. You hope you never need it, but we found out last year that we do."

Smart salt use is one of the most effective ways to keep winter roads open and safe. But you have to have a distribution system that gets salt from storage to roads as quickly as possible. This year, instead of storing salt and sand in just one location, Shelton has spread it out to five spots throughout the county for easier access to its 2,500 miles of roads.

"In traffic, we can lose an hour trying to mobilize," says Shelton. "This will hopefully cut that down to 15 minutes. You learn from your experience and last winter everyone learned a lot. I'm going to use anybody's idea that improves our efficiency and meets the expectation of our taxpayers."

In the Snow Belt, some citizens expect roads to always be cleared of snow and ice, no matter how bad the storm, says Bret Hodne, public works director for West Des Moines, Iowa. To help meet those sky-high expectations, Hodne orders salt months before the first snowflake falls. His motto is "don't trust your climate" because if you plan for an average season it's bound to be a record-setting winter of snow and ice.

In an average Iowa winter, Hodne's department uses 4,000 tons of salt. He has 8,000 tons in storage. "We're in excellent shape now," he says.

It's all part of meeting those increasingly high expectations.

"Let someone be confined to their house these days because their street isn't plowed and you may hear from them for weeks," says Hodne. "People are so accustomed to being mobile these days that not being able to drive pushes a hot button."

One reason is money. Snow-related shutdowns harm hourly workers the most, accounting for almost two-thirds of direct economic losses, according to the IHS Global Insight study.

"This is lost commerce you will never recover," says Shelton, who witnessed the economic hit Atlanta took. "Getting people on the road safely to go out to eat and buy groceries and gas affects our county's tax revenues. The bottom line is we don't want businesses closed due to snowy roads."

A new website, "Safe Winter Roads," quantifies the negative impact of impassable winter roads. The site features a "Salt Guru" video by Morton Satin, the Salt Institute's vice president of Science and Research, who points out that more than 116,000 Americans are injured and over 1,300 killed every year on snowy, slushy or icy pavement. Satin also cites a study showing "sensible salting" can reduce highway crashes by 80 percent and injuries by 85 percent.