Salt & Winter Roadway Safety: For Roadway Maintainers (Snowfighters)

Airline pilots have extensive training in elaborate simulators before they ever take the stick and put their paying passengers at risk. Now, too, do snowplow/spreader operators. Missouri DOT is using simulators to train their operators. "Simulated snowstorm rages ... inside" reported the Kansas City Star today. The agency is wary, though, that

prospective plow drivers [may] think of this as an oversized PlayStation or Xbox.

“Our simulation is training. It’s not how to hit things. It’s how to avoid things. It’s how to survive,” said George Perez, trainer for Salt Lake City-based MPRI Simulations Group, which sells the machines.

Jean Endsley, MoDOT’s manager for employee safety and health, figures the simulator could teach veterans and rookies alike. She tried it Wednesday and crashed twice in two-tenths of a mile.

“It was pretty scary.”

Missouri DOT replaces roughly 5 percent of the 1,800-plus workers on its snowplow force every year. All new drivers in the Kansas City region will receive the simulator training as a pilot.

Posted by Dick Hanneman at 08:48 PM | Permalink

Winter maintenance isn't just for the "snowbelt." TX DOT has installed nine highway cameras to provide snowfighting managers and the public with images of roadway conditions this winter in smaller cities like Wichita Falls, Amarillo and Lubbock; its earlier traffic cams were in the state's three largest cities: Houston, Dallas and San Antonio. Its Intelligent Transportation System brings "total integration" to the task of fighting winter storms and advising the public about deteriorating roadway driving conditions, according to a story in today's Wichita Falls Times-Record. See for yourself. The images appear on the Internet for the public to use. To look at them, visit TxDOT's Web site - http://www.txdot.gov - and enter "cameras" in the search box.

Posted by Dick Hanneman at 07:40 PM | Permalink

In the salt business, there is seldom any question as to what a Dome is. High pressure on embedded salt deposits in the earth's crust causes the salt to flow up plastiically, often with a bulging top. The characteristic, rounded water-tower-shape formation, resulted in the name salt domes, particularly in the Golf Coast area. So it was with a bit of surprise that I read of the massive salt dome in UK's Ribble Valley, rural Lancashire's country escape. Of course, Lancashire is Northwest England's home of Liverpool and Manchester, so having access to a country retreat is a great benefit to all those working in that heavy industrial environment - but the headline read, Massive salt dome to keep roads safe. Was this a new source of deicing salt?

No, not, nyet!

The article described a marvelous new structure designed to house the salt required to keep the winter roads of Ribble Valley and the surrounding area open throughout the winter season. County councillor Tony Martin, cabinet member for sustainable development correctly characterized the benefits of winter salting by stating,

Nobody realises until it's not done one day.

The word Dome originally meant house in is the English language. It came from the Latin domus, which itself was traced back to the Greek domos and Sanskrit dama. In Italian, the word duomo came to mean house of God, and since all Italian cathedrals had cupolas, the word dome attached itself to that bit on top.

Posted by Mort Satin at 09:56 AM | Permalink

Winter has arrived. Keeping roads open and safe is a priority for roadway agencies and the public gets early season reminders of just how important winter maintenance really is. Yesterday, a major snowstorm blocked I-70 west of Denver, CO, a major freight route through the Rockies.

Posted by Dick Hanneman at 05:08 PM | Permalink

The Salt Institute hosts a database of winter maintenance training materials at the request of the National LTAP Association's WinOps listserv. Recent additions are online self-training presentations on proper placement of truck-mounted pavement sensors and a tutorial on use of probabilistic weather forecasts.

Posted by Dick Hanneman at 11:35 AM | Permalink

Iowa DOT continues its leadership in snowfighting, unveiling its new $195,000 semi-trailer-housed snowplow simulator used to train its 1,200 snowfighting employees as a story in today's Des Moines Register explains.

Posted by Dick Hanneman at 09:46 AM | Permalink