South KC Persepctive
Snow Plowing Plan
By John Sharp
KCMO’s new more aggressive snow plowing plan announced on January 5 was a big improvement for the residential streets in my neighborhood during our recent snow and hopefully will continue to show good results during future snow and ice storms.
New City Manager Brian Platt who spent much of New Year’s Day observing snow plowing said the new more robust plan allows the city to deploy an additional 50 trucks and 100 drivers during all snow storms.
The new plan at long last adds overnight shifts to residential snow plowing routes and assigns all available employees in the city’s solid waste division and water department to snow removal operations during every snow. Collection of trash and recyclables will be suspended during big snow storms to make those drivers available for snow plowing.
Plowing multi-lane arterial streets will be done with multiple trucks working in tandem to make sure such streets are fully cleared on the first pass. The plan also increases the amount of salting during storms.
The announcement also noted the city intends to purchase another mini-plow to clear protected bike lanes.
Mayor Quinton Lucas praised the new plan for deploying more round-the-clock snow plowing and improving the plowing of residential streets so they don’t turn into sheets of ice after snow storms are over.