01-24-11 Common Council Meeting Minutes

Home Browse Search

REGULAR MEETING JANUARY 24, 2011 proactive anti-icing and reactive de-icing game-plans and materials and equipment ready to roll. He stated that they can put a fleet of 60 trucks and experienced snow plowing drivers on the streets by tapping Traffic and Lighting, Sewers, Water, Organic Resources, Solid Waste/Code Cleanup, Parks and other resources when big storms hit South Bend— everybody knows the drill and the team does it well units call in and volunteer to help the Street department in a team culture that is impressive to behold. They have pre-arranged Equipment Services support around the clock whenever snow operations move to that condition. Whenever you have that many pieces of heavy equipment operating in tough winter conditions you have risk of breakdowns so mechanics are there and ready to turn around repairs quickly. Mr. Gilot advised on the execution of the snow control plan. He stated that the crews initially open the mains, it is logical to get the 160 miles of major arteries, the traffic volume corridors, bus routes, streets that have bridges and typically have counts sufficient to warrant traffic signals plowed first. Starting with minor residential first before this major grid of streets is open would be pointless as you can't get anywhere once you get out of the plowed minor street. They open with multiple trucks as these are wide multi-lane streets and each plow pass gets about 8 feet wide. He stated that they are starting to pilot a large front plow with a side wing plow that would let one truck do the work of two on really wide arterial streets, but they can't use that truck in congested areas or where on-street parking poses obstacles to the wing plow. During a snow emergency declaration by the Mayor, in accordance with the ordinance, there is no parking on mains (they are signed to clearly communicate no parking during snow emergency declared by Mayor,) and there is supposed to be no driving during this time unless a medical emergency. He noted that they had really heavy snow accumulation, 2 inches per hour and Public Safety was having challenges getting to emergencies. They set up communications for escort plows to break off plowing mains to get them as close as possible to calls stranded and abandoned vehicles that had ventured out and got stuck initially hindered operations. They worked around obstacles and conditions, but eventually towed some vehicles blocking the public way by police powers and after that moved snow birds by tagging and towing so snow clearance could be completed. Once mains are open they do residential streets. When there is a lot of snow like this January 8th storm, they do residential snow clearance announcement and work north-south streets the (in this case since it was odd numbered) day after mains (8a.m.- 8 a.m.) and then east west streets the next (even numbered date) day. This is to allow people to move parked cars to mains so they can clean and widen the residential streets. They work inner 2/3 days when most on street parking in inner city are away at work and they work out 1/3 where mostly garage and driveway parking during daylight hours. Parks department and others use 4x4 trucks with front plows to do cul-de-sac streets as these are better suited to this type of plowing than our tandem or even single axle plow trucks with under-body now blades. This amount of snow accumulation got to be too much for the 4x4 trucks. They ended up using loaders and other heavy equipment to work many cul-de-sacs. Narrow streets with many parked cars also posed a problem we could not get our plows through some narrow streets without risking damage to vehicles in tight situations. They ultimately got relief when snowbirds got dug out or when police had offending vehicles towed away. If conditions are dry ahead of a predicted snow storm they pre-apply about 30 gallons per lane mile of salt brine which will stay on the pavement and melt snow and ice from the bottom up. When the storm starts as rain and then freezes and snow starts, it washes the salt to the river so they don't pre-salt when antecedent conditions are forecast to be wet. If there is a small amount of snow, or they are making great progress clearing snow down to nearly bare pavement they do de-icing with salt brine and apply various combinations of pre-wet salt/sand and slag abrasive mixes to improve traction. When snow is coming down at an inch and hour it is just a waste of money to apply salt products until you make substantial headway on snow clearance. Mr. Gilot stated why apply it and throw it to the snow banks on the next plow pass!) Downtown snow clearance poses a unique challenge for the high building density, there is no place to pile the snow, and the parking and the high pedestrian activity. We put parks and other equipment helping downtown. Code crews get cross walks. Loaders and trucking are needed to haul the snow piles out of the downtown. We stage snow at several nearby locations for short haul but ultimately take a lot of this snow to a large city-owned stormwater basin near the ethanol plant. He stated that they have city crews who do city owned facility parking lots and bridge walks. They also have resources assigned to walks on city properties. They enlist city employee volunteers 4