I was the guest presenter at DTN Meterologix 's webinar yesterday on the salt supply situation. Some member company personnel monitored the webinar; if you missed it, you can view the presentation online .

The motoring public will enjoy the fruits of the most recent report from the National Cooperative Highway Research Program. Entitled "Performance Measures for Snow and Ice Control Operations ," the Web-only report of NCHRP Project 6-17 is the latest of a valuable series of new reports that significantly raise the professionalism of winter operations.

One the public progressed beyond the "it's winter, we should stay at home when there's snow and ice on the road" or, the Sunbelt version "it will melt in the next day or two," public works managers were expected to engage Mother Nature to preserve winter roadway safety and mobility. At first, policy-makers and voters were satisfied that their snowfighter employees were out there fighting the good fight. Agencies reported fuel use, personnel time/overtime and whether they calibrated their spreaders -- input measures. They graduated in the past 20-30 years to output measures like lane-miles plowed, tons of salt applied, number of plows employed and the cost per lane-mile. Real professionals delivered to standard.

The latest plateau is the get a handle on how all these inputs and outputs actually work. "Performance measures" have been the objective for at least the last decade and modern, professional snowfighting agencies and contractors expect to be judged on how well their efforts deliver the ultimate product: the safest roadway possible carrying satisfied customers.

The National Cooperative Research Program has just released an important research report identifying the methods and measures for assessing snowfighters' performance. It's a "modern classic," certain to achieve instant impact and guide the provision -- and evaluation -- of winter snow and ice operations for years to come.

We owe a debt of gratitude to Tom Maze and his colleagues at Iowa State University.

After identifying eleven outcomes measures, the report reduces them to three categories with two recommended approaches for each. These include:

Degree of clear pavement as measured by manual observation or camera-assisted observation.

Traffic flow as measured by detectors of speed, volume and cooupancy or by road closure.

Crash risk as measured by friction (slipperiness) or reported crashes.

More even than professional snowfighters and those who allocate the (often tax) resources to support effective winter maintenance, all roadway users now have proven tools to determine if the job is being done properly. It usually is and snowfighters can now enjoy the respect they've well-earned.

The report identified 15 measures of "winter storm severity" attempting to calibrate the magnitude the the vast variety of storm conditions facing snowfighters. None of the agencies surveyed in the study have been able to devise a workable severity index. Many agencies also reported using "customer satisfaction" measures to help assess their snowfighting performance and determine how closely their efforts meet public expectations. Most use periodic public opinion surveys, some track 511 calls and telephone complaints. The report urges documenting best practices of measuring how well snowfighters meet public expectations. The report also recommends further research between snowfighting performance metrics and roadway safety.