Street clearing equipment sits at the ready at a Lincoln Transportation and Utilities maintenance shop.
GWYNETH ROBERTS, Journal Star
Granular salt is piled behind samples of granular calcium chloride (from left), calcium chloride brine, beet brine, sodium chloride brine and granular sodium chloride, all ingredients in the wet brine used to treat Lincoln streets.
GWYNETH ROBERTS, Journal Star
Lincoln Transportation and Utilities has several storage tanks of brine ready to treat streets this winter.
Lincoln officials will try out a residential snow plowing operation that deploys contractors to targeted snowy or icy side streets while city crews focus on main thoroughfares.Â
Lincoln Transportation and Utilities Director Liz Elliott announced the test project at a news conference Tuesday.Â
"Every storm is different, and we have been working on a more tailored approach that provides faster and more effective snow and ice removal," Elliott said. "It will take some time to create general guidelines for the timing of residential plowing, but our goal is to improve public safety and invest or allocate our limited funds wisely."
For years, the city's winter operations have prioritized arterials and school and bus routes during street clearing operations and used a 4-inch metric to determine when to plow residential streets.Â
That threshold drew criticism, including earlier this year from Lincoln City Council members. For years, people have said that neglecting side streets allowed them to turn into skating rinks unsafe for driving or walking, and a city task force on winter operations recommended nixing the 4-inch policy.Â
City officials initially adopted the policy following 2009 budget discussions where residents who responded to a survey said they preferred the city not spend more money to clear smaller snow accumulations. A previous city estimate priced residential snow removal at $250,000 to $300,000 in events of 4 inches of snow or less.Â
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The department allocates about $4 million each year to cover its winter operations, said Tim Byrne, who oversees winter operations.
Elliott and Byrne said revisions under the test project give the city more flexibility and can help keep residential streets passable.
Plowing priority streets can take city crews six to 12 hours, so allowing contractors to simultaneously clear residential streets should help prevent snowpack and ice accumulation as vehicles continue to drive over untreated streets, he said.Â
Contractors would deploy to areas of town with the largest accumulations, Byrne said.
The pilot program will also help the city determine what the cost of fully expanding city snow removal operations would be, Byrne said.Â
Granular salt is piled behind samples of granular calcium chloride (from left), calcium chloride brine, beet brine, sodium chloride brine and granular sodium chloride, all ingredients in the wet brine used to treat Lincoln streets.