The Spring issue of Salt and Highway Deicing (pdf 279.28 kB) newsletter is out.

Lack of sufficient storage is often a major issue for agencies that use rock salt for winter maintenance activities. Bret Hodne, Superintendent of Operations, Public Works for the City of West Des Moines, IA, past chair of the American Public Works Association's Winter Maintenance subcommittee and one of APWA's Top Ten Public Works Leaders, explains how his city and more than 20 neighboring jurisdictions jointly operate a large salt storage facility that allows them to take early season salt deliveries. The discounts they qualify for make the economics pay off for them.

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.

Back in December, winter snows paralyzed Seattle, WA when the city, citing concerns with salt in roadway runoff into Puget Sound, failed to use salt to clear city streets. Facing angry citizen reaction, the city recanted and now uses road salt. The mayor, of course, conducted an evaluation; he issued a "B" grade for the city DOT's response actions.

The Seattle Times on March 19 published results of its own independent review "to provide a more complete explanation of why the city was paralyzed by snow and ice for two weeks, even on days when there was no new snowfall." Reporter Susan Kelleher's article "Seattle DOT botched snow response," concluded:

When winter storms rolled over Seattle in December, bringing snow and freezing temperatures to the city, the manager in control of the city's snowplows had no experience directing a major snow response and had put in place as his No. 2 an employee who knew even less on the subject.

Together, Paul Jackson Jr. and Robert Clarke, a former crew chief, orchestrated a disjointed response to the winter weather that left major streets unplowed while Jackson, the man calling the shots, worried aloud about clearing certain streets so the mayor could drive to work, according to interviews with plow drivers and street crews and thousands of department records analyzed by The Seattle Times.

Better training was clearly an issue, beyond salt usage. The article continued:

While the weather was undeniably cold and snowy, interviews and a review of about 2,000 records, including e-mails and detailed reports on how the city deployed equipment and crews, show that transportation managers Jackson and Clarke made questionable calls on staffing and deployment.

Transportation crews described confusion and delays in dispatching plows when the snow first began falling, making it harder to stay on top of the game. Meanwhile, the records show trucks hopscotching around the city, attending to special requests or remaining idle while the city announced it was plowing "aggressively" and clearing main routes that residents swore had yet to see a plow.

Reader comments accepted the analysis and suggest that outrage for bonuses for bailout executives have a West Coast echo.

Bruce Watson writing in DailyFinance.com asks this highly-pertinent question as snowfalls forced cancelations and postponements throughout the Washington metro area and beyond. Watson's quest: to measure "the overall economic cost of a few inches of snow." Watson reports:

(A) month ago, when Europe was crushed by a massive snowstorm, newspapers quickly began to assess the cost of the unplanned holiday. The storm, which some hailed as the worst in twenty years, shut down highways, airports, and rail yards, killing business and leading many Brits to question whether the country, which had famously worked throughout the London Blitz, had lost its resolve.
Initial estimates, which placed the price at millions of dollars, were quickly revised upward. One in five people stayed home from work, decimating productivity. Ultimately, the cost in lost wages and business were pegged at somewhere in the neighborhood of $4.3 billion.

Salt Sensibility readers will remember last winter's $22 billion debacle in China .

Fortunately, we have an answer for Mr. Watson, as we posted on his website:

Great question: quantifying the benefits of snowfighting since snow & ice removal is the single largest public works expense for most snowbelt communities.
The Salt Institute has gathered the relevant data at http://www.saltinstitute.org/Uses-benefits/Winter-road-safety/Benefits-of-road-salt/Mobility .
Bottom line: if an agency fails to perform effective winter maintenance, the resulting gridlock for a single day will impose a greater economic cost on the local economy than the total snowfighting budget in that community for an entire winter.

Thanks for the opportunity to spread the word.

The news media's drawn some heat for its campaign to compare Barack Obama to John F. Kennedy. But maybe they were onto something. This week, President Obama made a decision rooted in a set of shared experience he has with JFK that no elected President in the intervening years can claim. We don't yet know how President Obama will deal with his first "Cuban Missile Crisis" challenge. But we know now: Obama knows snow!

Sure, you can quibble that Jerry Ford knew snow; but he was our only non-elected President. And purists might claim Richard Nixon lived in snowy New York City for a few years in the mid-1960s, but he had a car-and-driver then.

No, Boston and Chicago know snow and so do their sons.

Vice President Joe Biden warned that our enemies would test President Obama early to determine his toughness and determination. The enemy struck this past week as Mother Nature unloaded a full inch and a half of snow on the District of Columbia. Would the President stand tall or wimp out? We didn't have long to wait.

Deriding "snow wimps ," the President told reporters his daughters had a snow day at their new school, something that he said never would have happened back in Chicago. NBC Nightly News showed Obama saying, "My children's school was canceled today, because of, what? ... Some ice? As my children pointed out, in Chicago, school is never canceled. In fact, my seven-year-old pointed out that you'd go outside for recess. You wouldn't even stay indoors."

The Washington Post reported that that the President's

remarks might have captured Washington's attention as much as anything Obama has said since taking office a week ago. With those offhand comments, the president homed in on the one thing that riles Washingtonians every winter. His words reflected a common sentiment among recent arrivals from up North or out West: The denizens of Washington are weather wimps. Life around the Capital Beltway grinds to a halt for climatic events that would barely register in, say, Chicago....

In one sense, the president's gripe was understandable. In Chicago, where his daughters previously attended school, the public schools haven't closed for weather since a 1999 ice storm.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said it would take "a hurricane, an avalanche or a tidal wave" to close schools in Chicago, where until recently he was the schools chief. In Washington, the threshold for closure is somewhat lower.

As for Obama, he kept at it. "I'm saying that when it comes to the weather, folks in Washington don't seem to be able to handle things." ....

At Malia and Sasha's former school, snow days are the stuff of myth.

"I've been here six years, and we haven't closed them yet," not through drifting feet-thick snows, not through freezing winds off Lake Michigan that bring the chill down to 40 below, said David Magill, headmaster of University of Chicago Laboratory Schools.

"There are kids playing in the snow outside my window right now," he said. "They're building a fort."

Chicago obsesses about keeping streets clear. A mayor was voted out of office in 1979 over a blizzard that shuttered the city for days. Snowfall averages 38 inches a year in Chicago, 15 inches in Washington.

So, now we know. And enemies know. No wimps need apply.

Perhaps political advisor David Axelrod will be whispering in the President's ear about lowering expectations, but for now, the President's leadership -- certainly in the eyes of the salt industry -- is unassailable. No Michael Bilandic, he.

Last year, areas like northern Iowa, northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin were hard hit by winter. They were buried in record snowfall. This Spring they were flat out of salt and the DOTs in those states increased their bids by 100,000 tons, 421,000 tons and 351,000 tons respectively. And the media was filled with nearly-daily stories of the salt industry's frantic efforts to meet this dramatic increased demand.

Well, it looks like they were right to worry. The area is well ahead of last year's record snowfall. Dubuque, IA , for example, near the conjoining of the three states, reports snowfall fully 33% more than last winter.

Champaign-Urbana, IL has been buffeted with 21 storms so far this year; their usual winter is 23-30 storms total. And south of Chicago, Tinley Park, IL has responded to 24 snow events, one more than their usual full-season total.

Every time it snows in Seattle or Portand, transplanted Easterners awake aghast at the lack of effective winter maintenance and appalled at the toll in crushed cars and avoidable injuries. So it was last week when Mother Nature tried to award Seattle with an unaccustomed White Christmas. Seattle Times blogger Lynne Varner , an admitted refuge from the East Coast, spoke for what we know were thousands in the "silent majority" who would like to see high winter operations levels of service in their communitiies:

I believe in reducing waste, recyling and reusing anything with an iota of life left in it, but I'll risk my environmentalist credentials to support the use of salt.

Not the savory grains harvested off the shores of exotic locales like France and Hawaii, resplendent in their shades of blush, cream, gray or charcoal. I'm talking about their tougher, more common cousin, the salt used to de-ice sidewalks and roadways. Our region is underneath a blanket of white and a policy of salt and snow plows could be our way out. But a Seattle Times story pulls the curtain back on a disappointing landscape of city officials who, during this huge snowstorm, are refusing to okay the use of salt because it can be harmful to the environment, particularly to Puget Sound.

Give me a break. Few things aren't harmful to the environment if used incorrectly. But salt can be used safely. Full disclosure:

I grew up on the East Coast where sprinkling salt on roads and sidewalks was as ubiquitous as wearing snow boots and down jackets. East Coasters aren't a bunch of philistines, we just understood the importance of keeping the economy going by moving goods and humans even in the face of Mother Nature's fury.

Salt works, but I don't want to give the impression it is pretty. In snow belt regions, long winters and profligate use of salt meant getting unremoveable moisture stains on leather shoes and boots. A common sight on cars over a few years old was rust stains and bare spots where the salt had eaten into the glossy finish. We proudly called such cars rust buckets. Many people bought old jalopies for use in the winter, sparing nicer cars the indignities of salt rust or fender benders.

One more reason to salt? The chance that icy sidewalks could turn a holiday visit into a long bout of litigation because someone fell on someone else's property. I don't mean to sound like a commercial for the Salt Institute but that grainy spice has its place outside the kitchen.

And don't forget to read the comments by citizens tired of being the "silent" majority.

The Wisconsin Transportation Information Center (TIC), the Wisconsin Local Technology Assistance Program (LTAP) center's Winter 2009 Crossroads newsletter contains a timely review of how salt-strapped Wisconsin cities and counties are coping with expected short supplies of salt this winter. The story starts on page 4.

Bottom line: agencies are assigning a new priority to careful use of salt -- what we've been preaching as Sensible Salting for fully 40 years now. And they're considering alternative deicers. Studies like the NCHRP Report 577 have found salt the best for most storm conditions, but it's a responsible exercise for agencies to look at options. The story also reports, and laments, that some agencies are turning back the clock and expanding their planned use of salt/sand mixes.

A sidebar story beginning on page 7 asks: "Why not sand/salt mix?" and answers:

In fact, the assumption that sand-to-salt ratios of 50/50, 60/40, 70/30 or 75/25 are effective treatments is misguided. TIC agrees instead with research that shows mixing salt and sand (beyond the 2-5 percent salt needed to freeze proof sand stock piles) does not improve the effectiveness of either material.

Weigh the facts

Sand and salt work at cross-purposes. Sand improves traction when it is on top of ice or snow pack. In a salt/sand mix, as the salt begins to melt the snow pack, the sand sinks and mixes with the snow pack. Once the sand is gone from the surface, it does nothing to improve trac tion. Sand mixed with salt also reduces the melting effectiveness of the salt.

There are other costs of using a salt/sand mix to consider. It usually increases the overall application rate, so actual reduction in salt use and cost savings may be less than expected.

For example, in a change from applying salt at an application rate of 300 lbs per lane mile to a 75/25 sand/salt mix applied at 800 lbs per lane mile, the salt component of the mixture is 200 lbs per lane mile for a 33 percent reduction. Assuming a salt price of $60 per ton and a sand price of $4 per ton in this scenario, material costs go down only $1.80 per lane mile. Adjust the equation to a sand/salt ratio of 70/30 and the savings are $0.68 per lane mile. And mixing two-thirds sand with one-third salt saves nothing in material costs over straight salt.

If the route is 10 centerline miles (20 lane miles) or more, it may take an additional trip to the yard to refill the sand/salt mix. The labor and equipment costs for this trip wipe out the nominal savings on materials. Add to that the resource outlay for sand cleanup in the spring and the cost of the mixture is higher

The key point we all need to keep in mind is the life-saving, jobs-preserving mission of snowfighters. We cannot sacrifice public safety at the alter of professed fiscal concerns. If next summer's roadway rights-of-way grow a bit shaggier through less frequent mowing, that price is far more acceptable than one school bus skidding into a ditch this winter.

Today's Janesville Gazette carried the "good news" that "Weather-related emergencies handled 'without a hitch'." The local Wisconsin DOT dispatcher efficiently closed the major Chicago-Madison-Minneapolis/St. Paul Interstate highway when a semi jack-knifed. One crash, no lives lost. We are thankful for the life-saving response. The paper glowingly recorded the dispatcher averring that "The handling of Tuesday's closure was an encouraging practice run for future emergencies."

We hope not.

No one wants to risk life and limb in winter snow conditions, but closing a major transportation artery admits that Mother Nature won that round in the annual war against winter. There are certainly times when blizzard conditions can make a roadway impassible and unsafe; but road closures should be the last resort in preserving winter safety and mobilty.

Studies done at Marquette University in nearby Milwaukee show conclusively that timely application of salt and snow plowing are the most cost-effective defense against winter weather. They reduce traffic crashes by 85% and injuries even more -- 88.3%.

Moreover, closing a road is more than an inconvenience. Moving freight reliably is a major asset for the economy -- it means jobs and ensures the local economy can compete against regions -- and countries -- not so weather -challenged. That's why the Wisconsin Department of Local Affairs and Development produced a film, "Wisconsin Works in Winter," to use in its economic development efforts to convince industries to locate in the Badger State. Manufacturers need to get their workers to the plant, bring in raw materials and ship out finished goods, all on a reliable timetable, a timetable upset when winter maintenance efforts fail. Work done at Iowa State University documented that shippers value not only timely deliveries, but the costs of shipping delays, particularly "non-recurrent" delays they cannot anticipate.

So, hurray for WI DOT for its life-saving communications program, but rather than heralding a hopeful future pattern for winter storm response, we hope Wisconsin snowfighters do as they've done before: conduct a thoughtful post-storm debriefing to find out why their crews were unable to quell Mother Nature and keep cars and trucks moving safely on the road. Otherwise, when winter's snows close Wisconsin roadways, they may find the jobs have moved to Texas by Springtime.

During his radio broadcast on December 6, 2008, President-elect Barack Obama promised to create the largest public works construction program since the inception of the interstate highway system more than a half century ago. This ambitious program will be a pivotal part of the economic recovery program he hopes to fashion with Congress immediately after being sworn in on Jan. 20, 2009.

Mr. Obama went on to say he would invest record amounts of money in the vast infrastructure program, which would include highways, bridges, sewer systems, mass transit, electrical grids, and work on schools, dams and other public utilities. The green-oriented jobs generated would result in the creation of greater energy efficiencies while minimizing negative environmental impacts.

It is critical that an investment of this magnitude truly reflects the imperatives of twenty-first century requirements and beyond. Infrastructure programs must be performance-based to ensure that they are meeting our functional needs of minimizing net congestion while maximizing long-term asset preservation, rather than pandering to parochial political interests. Investments in higher quality engineering will also lessen long-term maintenance requirements and associated costs.

Green highways will not only require more eco-friendly and recycled asphalts, but will also have to incorporate an engineering design that efficiently manages runoff including heavy metals, inorganic salts, aromatic hydrocarbons, and suspended solids that accumulate on the road surface as a result of regular highway operation and maintenance activities, such as deicing and herbicide applications. This might include porous pavement shoulders linked to bioretention swales that will reduce pollutants from surface runoff as well as agronomically-adapted or environmentally insensitive buffer areas. The same thinking must go into building and upgrading our bridge system.

While economic recovery is the prime motivation behind this ambitious program to renew our nation's aging infrastructure, we must ensure that the investment of taxpayer dollars provides us with the practical means to improve our daily mobility and commercial efficiency while preserving the environment for generations to come.

This is the hottest question about salt this Fall, pushing aside questions of whether there is any credible evidence that reducing dietary salt could improve people's health (none yet). This is the topic of the just-released number of the Institute's Salt and Highway Deicing newsletter, now online.

What does an economic index begun in 1744 in London have to do with getting road salt to Cedar Rapids, Iowa in November 2008? It would be speculation, to be sure, to connect the dots, but one thing is certain: the veritable Baltic Dry Index (BDI) is not speculative. The BDI captures real shipping costs around the world and reflects not just the cost of moving raw materials like salt, but is a reliable proxy for economic activity.

Lately, of course, it's been plunging. The inventory of cargo ships is pretty inelastic, so when economic activity stagnates and shipping demand follows, the index falls. Lower shipping rates are great for those who still have goods to ship, of course. And that gets us back to road salt.

With all North American mines working at capacity and fearful snowfighting agencies voicing anxious demand for more salt deliveries, salvation can come only through increased salt imports. With lowered shipping costs, those imports should be more affordable this year than in the past when higher shipping rates economically advantaged domestic producers.

Perhaps the lower BDI, as well as the evidence surge in demand for road salt, explains why the lead story of the October 20 issue of River Transport News reported a spike in salt imports into New Orleans and likely record volumes of upriver salt barge shipments.

Still, yesterday, we received three media calls from Michigan alone. Clearly, if help is on the way, it hasn't arrived yet.

Confirming earlier studies by Global Insight, Inc. and Iowa State University (and, doubtless, many others), the Washington State DOT just released a report on a four-day, winter weather closure of Interstate 90 at Snoqualmie Pass last winter with a total economic loss of $28 million.

The study employs new economic impact assessment methods developed by Washington State University's Social and Economic Sciences Research Center seeking "a reality-based, comprehensive analysis of the effects … on the state's freight-dependent industries and the economy as a whole." The study included a survey of trucking firms and freight-dependent businesses. The study found the four-day storm cost 170 people their jobs and those still employed were penalized $8.6 million in lost wages. State tax revenues declined $1.42 million through reduced economic activity. That's one short segment of one road for one storm.

The "first significant import shipment of bulk salt in more than four years" has hit New Orleans, according to the lead story in the October 20 issue of River Transport News. "Industry observers indicated that over the last three weeks, lower Mississippi imports have accelerated with the arrival of several 40,000-ton shipments. Additional shipments are expected." If sustained, the Port of New Orleans "salt imports could approach or exceed record levels." The previous record was set in 2001 and was nearly matched two years later.

The headline, "Booming Salt Demand Adds More Pressure to Barge Freight," tells the corollary story: upriver salt shipments are straining available barge capacity. "It appears that riverborne salt shipments could reach a new record high this year, exceeding the previous record of 9.7 million tons set in 2004," the RTN story reported. They have averaged 8.5 million tons since 1996, the story added. The additional stress is magnified, the story continued.

Under normal circumstances, the projected increase in riverborne salt shipments would cause barely a ripple in the inland barge market. This year, however, salt shipments are being compressed into a significantly shorter shipping window.

Salt shipments into the upper Midwest got an extremely late start this past spring. The heavy snows and severe weather last winter and spring not only resulted in heavy salt usage; it also resulted in the latest opening of the upper Mississippi River to navigation on record. Shipments were further disrupted in May and June as the upper Mississippi River was periodically closed to navigation due to flooding and high water.

When the reporter called for our explanation for the spike in imports, I noted that they seem to reflect the "supply" response to the "demand" signal sent out a couple months ago by Upper Mississippi state DOTs who sought vastly expanded bid amounts of deicing salt. Surprise. Markets work!