Missouri city turns to tech to improve snow removal
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Kansas City’s snowplow operators are clearing snow quicker and keeping residents safer with the help of a cloud-hosted platform.
As the chill of December sets in, many communities across the U.S. are buying last-minute holiday gifts, preparing guest rooms for relatives and getting their ice scrapers and road salt ready for wintry weather.
That includes Kansas City, Missouri, which has prepared for snow days with the help of a cloud-enabled software tool aimed at making snow removal operations more efficient. The RUBICONSmartCity platform offers drivers turn-by-turn navigation as they plow through the city, documents their route progress and tracks the location of the city’s 300 snow vehicles.
The platform, which snowplow operators access via an app on tablets and managers access through a web portal, also allows users to adjust snow removal routes as needed, said Tyler Molinaro, vice president of Routeware, a provider of tech solutions for service vehicles. The company acquired the RUBICONSmartCity platform in August.
In case one snowplow operator’s vehicle breaks down in the middle of a shift, for instance, a nearby operator can reconfigure their snow removal route through the app to seamlessly continue operations, said Michael Shaw, director of public works for Kansas City, Missouri.
It’s imperative for cities to conduct timely, efficient snow removal efforts to ensure residents and emergency vehicles can use the roads safely during winter events, Molinaro said. With the platform, drivers and managers can communicate in real-time and execute snow removal operations in a more streamlined way.
Before adopting the software solution, officials realized “we weren’t doing enough,” said Shaw. Snow vehicles could have passed over the same streets or skipped areas in need by accident, wasting resources and putting residents at risk.
And while cost savings may not be significant after adopting the software, “what we did see was an immense increase in citizen satisfaction” regarding the quality of snow removal. The software, for instance, has helped reduce vehicle route overlap, decreasing mileage by 3%, and cutting idle time by 12% since its deployment in 2021.
Plus, the software is helping city officials better budget for snow seasons by offering data insights, like how many times vehicles passed through roads for plowing or salting, Shaw said. That information — combined with data like the projected temperature and snowfall — offers officials a clearer “definition on what the budget for snow removal needs to be on an annual basis.”
“The other benefit that we saw was we were able to take people who've never plowed snow before and actually say, ‘You can use this tablet,’” Shaw said. “We were able to quickly move people who have never plowed snow before to plowing snow within a matter of weeks.”
Kansas City is short about 100 snow vehicle drivers, creating a critical gap of workers available for snow removal operations during the winter season, Shaw said.
With the app and some additional training to prepare existing city staff like building inspectors to drive snow plows, he said more employees can be tapped to plow snow during times of need, “and we’re able to provide a better service.”
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