Lexington plans to have more crews pretreating roads and collecting data on response time as part of its overhauled plan for winter weather.
City officials unveiled the new winter weather plan Tuesday. Its development follows criticism over how the city responded to last January’s ice storm.
“Over the years, we have made many adjustments to make this plan work and provided new resources to try to solve the problems,” Mayor Linda Gorton said in March when she announced the review. “Our approach currently isn't working very well and we need to start over.”
The city recorded 5.5 inches of snow and 1.5 inches of sleet and freezing rain from Jan. 24 to 26, with more than a week of freezing temperatures afterward. The precipitation froze to roadways, causing dangerous conditions, traffic accidents and school closures. The lack of road upkeep prompted widespread criticism of city hall’s efforts.
In April, the city said constraints on resources and staff, gaps in training, inconsistencies in communication and no formal structure for how the city manages incidents all contributed to the prolonged period of impassable neighborhood roads.
Crews mainly focused on pretreating bridges, hills and overpasses, only treating some major roads, officials said.
Now, the city plans to treat all its ranked roads prior to or within five hours of a forecasted winter storm. The city is also upping the amount of trucks at work, adding 16 more drivers and agreements with eight contractors.
It’s also streamlining how some neighborhood roads are classified, combining Rank 3 and Rank 4 roads, which are traffic routes through and connecting neighborhoods.
Charlie Martin, Lexington’s acting commissioner of environmental quality and public works, told a committee of council members Tuesday the city plans to be more efficient before the storm hits, and more adaptable after.
“You know, too much windshield time getting filled up with salt or getting filled up with fuel, and what have you, is lost time where you're de-icing or plowing, and we're trying to minimize that as much as possible,” he said.
Major roads, like Man o’ War Boulevard and Alumni Drive, will be treated by outside contractors to allow city crews to focus on neighborhood streets. The city is also working with Fayette County Public Schools to create a backup plan for bus routes and attempt to get students back to school quicker.
Lexington will outfit its entire fleet, including contractor crews, with GPS tablets to track how roads are being treated.
“One of the things that I was a little frustrated with, and I think the group was frustrated as well, is there's somewhat of a lack of data in order to be able to determine how much can you cover given a certain storm event, and I think this is going to give us a lot of data that helps us adapt this plan moving forward,” Martin told council members.
This year’s city budget includes nearly $5 million to handle snow and ice. That includes $1 million for emergency contractor operations, $725,000 for routine contractor operations, $1.9 million toward the city’s snowplow fleet, $1 million for salt stockpile, $80,000 for beet heat chemicals and $200,000 for overtime.
Lexington Environmental Quality and Public Works is a financial supporter of WEKU.
