‘Dude, where’s my snow plow?’ City might soon be able to give residents online data

Thespec.com
Jan. 5, 2017
By Matthew Van Dongen

Hamilton is finally looking at giving snowed-in residents an online peek at the progress of city plows during storms.

But a local version of the popular "track my plow" application will likely not be ready in Hamilton until next winter - and it's unclear whether you'll be able to follow individual plows in real time.

The idea of public online monitoring of plows has been raised repeatedly in Hamilton over several years, including loudly by councillors in 2013 after a bad Boxing Day storm was followed by a blizzard of complaints about MIA machines.

City operations staff iced the idea at the time, citing challenges with older automatic vehicle location (AVL) technology as well as locked-in contracts.

But the city began test-driving new tracking technology late last year in about 20 snowplows and will have installed it on the remaining 90 municipal snow-clearing machines by the end of this year, said road operations manager Bob Paul.

"When that's in place, we'll be looking at piloting a 'where's my plow' type tool," he said, adding such an experiment is unlikely to go live until next winter.

Council has yet to weigh in on the details, but Paul said department staff are leaning toward an online tool that shows "real-time results" of snow-clearing - for example, which streets have been cleared so far during a storm - rather than live-tracking of hundreds of individual municipal and contract plows.

Paul said he's seen a "mixed bag" of reactions to live-tracking plows in various cities.

Toronto is testing a PlowTO app that shows both the location of snow-clearing equipment and streets colour-coded by the time elapsed since the last plow came through. The City of Vaughan has allowed residents to monitor plow locations and results online since 2010.

The City of Ottawa, on the other hand, recently yanked its public plow-tracking site - which tried to give time estimates for plow arrivals on residential streets - after the experiment prompted resident complaints. The tool is still used internally by city staff.

Hamilton expects to start with public tracking of city vehicles only.

The city can call on more than 350 snow-clearing machines via contracts with private operators in a snowstorm. But Paul said requiring those operators to pay for new technology would bump up the hourly rate charged to the city.

Coun. Chad Collins, who asked for a study of online plow-tracking three years ago, said he would like to see cost estimates for monitoring of both public and private plows.

"Given so many residential streets are serviced by contractors, I think that would be the preferred way to go," he said. "I don't think a lot of our calls during winter storms come from residents wondering when Main Street will be cleared."

Collins also said he would press for real-time tracking of plows, rather than more "generic" information about cleared roadways.

"My preference is certainly to allow people to track our progress, or in some cases, lack thereof. I don't think we should be afraid of that," he said. "In some cases, resident feedback is what allows us to identify service gaps."

Sheena Hudson would love to have some insight into when a plow will rumble to the rescue of snowbound Crestwood but she's not convinced she'd enjoy watching plows fly by online.

Hudson and several neighbours complained their crescent was skipped during snowstorms in 2015. "Is that going to change because I can watch on the computer? I can tell they've missed me by looking out the window."