BLUEFIELD, W. Va. -The City of Bluefield unveiled their new “Snow Plowed Road Status Map” at a City Board meeting on Tuesday, having given it a trial run over the previous weekend.
This uses web-based mapping software app, ArcGIS, downloaded on electronic tablets that have been installed in each snowplow truck, to track their location as they cover the City’s many streets.
“…We’ve outfitted all of our snowplow trucks with tablets that allows them to indicate where they’ve plowed throughout the city and deliver that to us so that we can deliver it to the community and help them see if their road’s been plowed in the morning, if they’re trying to plan a trip somewhere else in the city, and they want to know, ‘are the roads cleared?’ well, hopefully this should give you some kind of indication…” says Trenton Burnette, Graphical Information Systems (GIS) administrator for the City of Bluefield.
Burnette says this project has been a year in the making and was inspired by similar programs successfully used by other municipalities.
“Well, you know, there’s a lot of other communities across the country that do a similar sort of thing. I think I see all the time during winter people say, ‘look how cool this is that my community shows what’s been scraped and what’s been not…’” says Burnette.
Using a button press, snowplow truck drivers can track their location, recording a path of where they’ve been. They can also report roadblocks that may have prevented them from plowing a street.
“On the app also, there’s several indicators… if there’s a car obstruction or a tree obstruction or some other kind of obstruction that wouldn’t allow our snowplows to go and plow that street, so that’s also vital information for the community so that they can recognize if their street’s not getting plowed, ‘oh, this car’s in the way and that’s why…’” says Burnette.
Burnette recommends other cities consider using mapping software, calling it a relatively inexpensive option to bring the community vital information about their streets.
He also says this is part of a larger project to integrate better mapping data technology into the City and hopes to continue building apps like this one “to provide data to the community.”
You can find this website here or by going to the Bluefield Public Works street division’s snow and ice control page.
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