City of Hamilton testing snowplow-tracking app out of public view
The ongoing wait leaves Hamilton among a shrinking minority of large Canadian cities that don’t offer some sort of public monitoring of snow-clearing operations

TheSpec.com
Jan. 9, 2018
Matthew Van Dongen

The city is testing an online "track my plow" application meant to give snowbound residents a real-time glimpse of road clearing progress.

But for now, only city winter control workers can see it.

After years of on-and-off requests from resident and councillors — usually following big snowstorms — the city is internally testing a plow-tracking app for both its website and separately for smartphones, confirmed winter control head Bob Paul.

Paul said the feature will likely go public late this year or in early 2019, rather than this winter as suggested a year ago.

"I'd like to say we could do it earlier," said Paul, who added it took longer than expected last year to outfit city trucks with new location technology. "But I would also like to release a proper product that actually works the way it is supposed to."

City staffers have long appeared "more reluctant to embrace the idea than the general public," suggested Coun. Chad Collins, who first lobbied for online tracking after a 2013 Boxing Day storm prompted a flurry of resident complaints about MIA plows.

Collins argued the city already fields a blizzard of calls about plowing during snowstorms. An online tool would allow residents to independently check the city's progress, he said — and maybe catch mistakes.

"I just think it could provide an added layer of accountability," said Collins, who plans next week to ask for a firm timeline to go public with the app — ideally, this winter.

David Delville is also looking for a way to hold the city accountable for what he considers a spotty record of snow-clearing on Woodlawn Court.

He said the court in Dundas was cleared after a pre-Christmas storm, but hasn't seen a plow since then. "The city adamantly refuses to clear the snow most of the time," he wrote, speculating the problem is city-contracted private plow operators who don't like negotiating the narrow, hilly street.

"Shouldn't the city be held accountable?" he asked.

(For the record, Paul said late Monday the court was cleared that day, but added it is surrounded by higher-priority roads that may make it seem like plows are ignoring the street.)

In the past, city managers have argued real-time monitoring would cost taxpayers.

While all 110 city-owned plows now feature new location-tracking technology, Hamilton also relies on a variety of private plow contractors to handle regular and sporadic snow-clearing jobs.

Those companies may end up charging more to adopt the city's tracking technology, but Paul said he didn't have any immediate information about cost implications Monday.

The ongoing wait leaves Hamilton among a shrinking minority of large Canadian cities that don't offer some sort of public monitoring of snow-clearing operations. At the moment, Ottawa and Hamilton are the largest Ontario cities without an online option.

Canada's capital actually did have an online plow map in 2016 — but then axed it after bugs in the public pilot project frustrated snowbound residents. (The tracking map still exists, but is now only available to Ottawa city staff.)

City staffers have pointed to the failed Ottawa beta test as a cautionary tale.

Of Canada's 10 biggest cities, Hamilton, Ottawa, Winnipeg and Vancouver remain public plow-tracking holdouts. (Vancouver, to be fair, is statistically one of the least-snowy cities in the nation.)

Toronto, Montreal, Calgary, Edmonton and Mississauga all offer residents some option to track snow-clearing progress or plows online. Increasingly, smaller cities such as Guelph, Windsor and Vaughan also offer the service.

The province also lets all residents track plowing progress on 400-series highways — including through Hamilton — at trackmyplow.com.

The quality and timeliness of available information varies quite a bit from city to city, though. Toronto has an elaborate online map showing real-time plow and salt truck locations as well as colour-coded streets that indicate the length of time since a plow rumbled by.

Mississauga offers a similar online map, plus downloadable road condition apps for both Apple and Android phones.

Windsor now has a website that shows a kind of heat map for plowed streets, representing a four-hour period of snow clearing. But you can also download weekly snowplowing data as part of the city's Open Data effort.