Salt & Winter Roadway Safety: For Highway Users

Due to a spurt in immigration in the 1990s, 33 million more commuters jam U.S. roadways today than a decade ago, according to Commuting in America III, a new report by the Transportation Research Board. All told, 162 million Americans use our roads to get to work, up from 124 million a decade ago. These commuters are among the most time-sensitive (and often, frustrated) highway users. The report notes that the average "rush hour" twenty years ago stretched 4.5 hours; today it exceeds 7 hours a day. "Congestion is the public issue that dominates all others in the new millennium," the report warns.

The 33 miillion new commuters added to a highway system basically the same size as the decade earlier is about 35% more than the usual 25 million per decade rate of commuter growth for previous decades -- largely due to young immigrant workers. While the policy debate over Social Security is focused on the vast hordes of retiring workers, the TRB commuter report notes the "declining influence of the baby boom generation."

Another interesting trend is the continued decline of the "traditional commute" of suburb-to-city. Only 19% of commuters do that. Most commute suburb-to-suburb; about two-thirds of the growth was in this area. One-quarter of commuters are intra-city, but 83% of the growth in commuting is in the suburbs (17% in the cities).

Transit use is flat, but carpooling is growing and four-in-five commuters drive by themselves.

Finally, non-recurring congestion, including weather-related delays, were denoted "Temporary Loss of Capacity" -- so "TLC" no longer means "tender loving care." Clearly, commuters need more tender loving care -- and effective winter maintenance!

Posted by Dick Hanneman at 06:17 PM | Permalink

Departments of Transportation in western states have been among the last in the U.S. to abandon sand for winter highway maintenance and switch to straight salt. This winter, Idaho joins the bandwagon. Utah was the first to embrace straight salt in a successful quest to reduce high winter levels of airborne particulate contamination. Sand is also an environmental threat to roadside stream fish habitat and, when all costs are considered, more expensive than straight salt.

Idaho DOT announced it was emulating the success of straight salting in Utah and predicted the move would stretch tax dollars. More than that, straight salt will impose fewer direct costs on drivers. KPVI-TV in Pocatello interviewed Steve Gertonson, Maintenance Enginee saying:

"It will reduce broken windshields for people that get broken windshields from the sanding material spread on the roadway; we'll save labor costs through less trips on the roadway plowing; in the springtime we always have to go through and clean up all the sanding material that is deposited on the roadways, so there should be less labor hours and clean up in the spring; and less fuel use throughout the winter."

Posted by Dick Hanneman at 08:30 PM | Permalink

Buffalo, NY is regarded by most cognoscente as America's snowiest city and Chicago, of course, is the snowy and blustery "Windy City." Both set early snowfall records today. Buffalo was paralyzed with two feet of snow in some areas and 8.3 inches at the airport, breaking the October record of 6 inches set on Halloween in 1917. The snow forces multiple cancelations. Chicago recorded its earliest-ever snowfall (about an inch), even though the Cubs and White Sox are through before their respective Major League championships.

Snowfighters, get ready. Here it comes!

Posted by Dick Hanneman at 03:55 PM | Permalink

The Salt Institute has been singled out as an example of nefarious behind-the-scenes policy manipulation in a story in yesterday's Chicago Tribune.

The subject is Emergency Evacuation Report Card 2006, a new study funded by the American Bus Association and produced and publicized by the American Highway Users Alliance (AHUA). The study shows that many large U.S. cities have deficient emergency plans to evacuate their populations. Our involvement? I sit on the AHUA Board.

It turns out that the Salt Institute has a major interest in Chicago's plans to move traffic smoothly and safely in emergencies -- if a dozen or more snowstorms every winter are emergencies. Fortunately, the City (unlike the Trib) takes these "emergencies" in stride with one of the most effective winter maintenance programs in North America.

The Trib advises "take the (AHUA) study with a large grain of salt." Fortunately, Chicagoans know better: they take every winter storm emergency with lots of grains of salt.

Posted by Dick Hanneman at 10:40 AM | Permalink