CINCINNATI — It's our first snow of the season, which means drivers are already seeing the impact of winter weather on Cincinnati roads. However, you might have noticed you couldn't track snowplows despite the city's new upgrades.
After a massive winter storm in January revealed major issues with the Department of Public Service's equipment and technology, officials just last month announced upgrades to winter operations — including an all-new snowplow tracker.
Last Wednesday, crews showed us the new platform, which provides real-time updates to residents during weather events. Tablets inside each of the city's snowplows will feed data back to DPS, which will update the tracker. Previously, drivers were using paper maps to find their routes and had no way of relaying to dispatchers which roads got which treatments.
"It's way better than the old school, just maps, and you're looking at your map and it's dark, you know, trying to turn your light on," said Chris Huntsberry, who was training drivers. "It's a very nice system."
WATCH: We tried to figure out why the snowplow tracker wasn't working
So, we checked the city's interactive map today to see if officials were updating road conditions and treatments. However, we learned from a city spokesperson that the tracker will only be active during large winter operations (like major storms).
"The snowplow tracker is only active during full winter response operations, when DPS crews are working in 12-hour day and night shifts to cover the entire city. During smaller or more localized events, the tracker may not be turned on," the tracker says right now.
The tracker is expected to show which roads are untreated, pretreated, salted, plowed or both. It'll also highlight problem roads that drivers should avoid.
We previously covered the plethora of unplowed streets in places like Mount Adams, Northside and more during the historic snow. After learning the tracker isn't on, we spoke to council member Seth Walsh, who had advocated for improvements to the city's fleets after January's storm.
"This is the first chance for the city to showcase the hard work we've done over the last year," Walsh said. "The reality is that there's a lot of pre-treating happening, which is not part of the tracker."
Because of how tough the storm was this January, the city said 20 of its 80 trucks were forced out of commission for repairs or replacements. During last month's press conference, Pureval said the city has done more prework on the fleet to ensure it can stand the weather, and they've equipped other city vehicles with plows to help bolster the fleet.
Walsh said he and others on city council are looking into including drivers who are pre-treating the roads as part of the tracker.
"Let's be able to show it, so people can see where the trucks are because that's going to help people have a lot more confidence in the system," Walsh said.
Click here to check out the tracker when more severe winter weather hits.
