Snowplow tracker launches in time for city’s first snowfall

Just in time for the first snowfall of the season, the city has launched its online “plow tracker” application, giving residents a chance to monitor road-clearing progress.

The “soft launch” of the Hamilton plow-tracking app Wednesday follows on-and-off requests from residents and councillors for years, as well as internal testing by city winter control workers last year.

A public tracker on the city’s website now displays on a map where maintenance vehicles are currently deployed.

There is also the option to see where plows have travelled in the last two, four, 12 and 24 hours.

“It allows (the public) to plan their day or plan their commute ... if they need to go out in a winter event,” said city operations manager Bob Paul. “It allows them to also see where we’ve been and what we’re doing.”

The information is fed to the site using location-tracking technology the operator carries on a mobile device, Paul said.

The app has the ability to track the location of all 110 city-owned plows, 46 contracted plow trucks and 140 pieces of “standby equipment” used to clear roadways in larger snow events, he added.

Ward 5 Coun. Chad Collins, who first lobbied for online tracking after a 2013 Boxing Day storm prompted a flurry of resident complaints about snowplow response time, called this week’s launch “welcome news in light of the wait.”

“I think the thrust and push originally was to get more information out into the community and some transparency as it relates to how we deliver our own services,” he said.

Oftentimes, snow clearing is one of the services the city receives a “large” number of calls about from residents, Collins said.

While Collins said that’s not the reason behind the request for the plow tracker, the feature also provides a way to track and verify whether contractors plowed their assigned routes.

Hamilton is not the only city with a plow-tracking system.

Toronto, Montreal, Calgary, Edmonton and Mississauga all offer residents some option to track snow-clearing progress or plows online, as do Guelph, Windsor and Vaughan.

The launch of Hamilton’s application comes as southern Ontario was walloped on Thursday by the major snowfall of the season.

Between five to 10 centimetres of snow was expected to fall across the region before Friday morning. By Thursday night, Hamilton police said there were a dozen mostly minor accidents around the city. West Region OPP, which covers most of southern Ontario west of Hamilton, tweeted that they responded to 340 crashes between 4 and 8 p.m.

During an average winter season, the City of Hamilton uses:

• 65,000 tonnes of salt;

• 15,500 tonnes of “pickle mix” (a sand/salt mixture);

• 250,000 litres of salt brine for anti-icing.

To track the progress of Hamilton’s snow plows, visit hamilton.plowtracker.com.