Tuesday, November 16, 2010

A New Winter Activity- Watching Snow Plow Progress

Here's something kind of cool; next winter, Spokane County residents may be able to follow the progress of snowplows- on the internet! Some road graders and plow trucks are being equipped with global positioning system devices that show where road crews are and what they’re doing.

There are a couple kinks to be worked out first though- such as how to post the info so that people don't approach plow operators with demands for service. Here's how the system will work.

I think this is kind of a cool idea, but some people I've talked to say they would rather see the money go somewhere else. What do you think?

2 comments:

Charles said...

Does sound like a good idea, I was in an area missed a couple of years ago in the city and they were showing the whole city was plowed and we had not seen a plow in the whole neighborhood. They plowed a street three blocks south of me then went for a break and when they came back after the break started 2 blocks north of me and went on, so 5 blocks in the middle got missed.

SRTC Staff said...

GPS would definetely help prevent situations like that. I think it would kind of provide piece of mind to citizens also, to be able to look at the computer and see that the plows were headed your way. And you could tell your boss approximately how late you're going to be for work after a heavy snow, judging by how close the plows are to your house.


About SRTC

SRTC is the federally designated Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) for Spokane County. Urbanized areas with populations exceeding 50,000 people are required to have an MPO. SRTC was formed to address the county's transportation planning needs. It provides coordination in planning between the public, cities, small towns, the county, the state, transit providers, and tribes.

SRTC offers services including transportation monitoring, transportation modeling, census information analysis, travel demand forecasting, historical traffic count analysis, geographic information systems, and trip generation rates.