“The key words are ‘situational awareness,’” said Walter Tomassetti, assistant district executive for PennDOT’s District 9, which includes Cambria and Somerset counties. “The focus is on being ahead of the storm.”
Now, when PennDOT officials see major weather coming, such as double-digit snow, representatives from each district statewide have a pre-storm meeting to cover what resources will be needed most — and where. Depending on what’s expected, they also may set up a command center in each district.
Both are part of protocol implemented after a review of a 2007 Valentine’s Day storm that left motorists stranded for more than 24 hours in Eastern Pennsylvania. The district’s 511 system to communicate with the public was part of those changes, too.
“When storms hit, we have people staged and ready prior to the material hitting the ground,” Tomassetti said. “It used to be that it would start snowing and then we would respond.”
Despite recent storms, the season so far has brought less snowfall than typical, but freezing rain has required about the same amount of material as this time last year. The overall budget for the district is $20.9 million, which includes scores of tons of salt and many hundreds of thousands of gallons of brine to spray over anti-skid, a blend of salt and limestone, District Executive Tom Prestash said.
“We have not had the snowfall, but we have had icing and freezing rains, which drives up material use,” he said. “Right now, we have no issues with material on-hand.”
PennDOT crews were busy last week, manufacturing brine at the department's Ebensburg shed and making sure dump trucks were in working order, PennDOT’s Cambria County manager, Jeffrey Mitchell, said.
The county has 44 plow trucks, now equipped with new technology for drivers to manage materials from the cab and reduce waste. Of those, 36 are tandem trucks that can carry a 14-ton load.
“One of the best strides in technology that we’ve made in the past several years is changes for the operator, inside the cockpit,” Mitchell said.
A screen inside the trucks updates each driver on how many lane miles — pounds of material that goes on each mile of road, which the technology adjusts according to driver speed — as well as air and road temperatures. The driver also can adjust how quickly the truck’s spinner moves and monitor the ratio of anti-skid to salt, based on conditions such as traffic.
There are updates to outside the trucks, too. Steel plow blades, which had to be raised slightly above the road and only lasted a storm or two, are being phased out and replaced with a carbide-edged blade that can sit directly on the road and works similar to a Squeegie — flexible and longer-lasting because they don't sustain the same amount of wear and tear, Tomassetti said.
“It's all about being prepared,” he said.
©2015 The Tribune-Democrat (Johnstown, Pa.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
