St. Paul continues to refine snow plowing process

Two years ago, St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman ordered a review of snow emergency procedures after residents criticized the state of the streets during an unusually harsh winter. With the season's first major snowstorm over, city officials say they're continuing to improve the plowing process.

The Public Works Department is now keeping a closer eye on the data it collects and is promising better communication with residents.

It stems from the hiring last year of Dave MacCallum, a philosopher and computer scientist turned civic consultant, who suggested the city collect a lot of data on things such as school bus delays and response times for complaints — and use it to focus resources.

Assistant City Engineer Joe Spah said one metric he now watches very closely is the time it takes drivers to finish particular plowing routes.

"On a granular level we can see just how well we're doing with completion of routes, where we're putting our resources and how efficiently they're getting through now," he said.

Spah said there are a lot of factors to consider, such as how wet the snow is and how much ice is on the roads. But he said this big data will help him prepare for the next big snow.

"We're hoping that averaging this data over time tells us what we're doing well, here are the routes that are taking longer, so that we can continually focus in and drill in to ways to continually improve — not just this one set point in time but continually as we proceed in the future," he said.

Public Works Director Kathy Lantry said the city is also making a better effort to communicate with residents. The department is doing more than just alerting people when a snow emergency is in effect.

Lantry said they're posting detailed progress reports on Facebook and the city's website. She said these used to be shared internally, but it's information the public needs to have.

"It's set up so that you can easily scroll through it to find out what's the current temperature? What do we expect for overall snowfall? What is the probability? How many pieces of equipment do we have? What are our next steps?" she said.

Lauren McKliget, who lives on St. Paul's east side, said she appreciates the city's communication efforts. And during the first snow emergency of the season, McKliget said the plowing was done fairly well, too.

Nevertheless, she said crews would be able to do a better job if the city were more aggressive about towing illegally parked cars. McKliget said four neighbors on her block left their vehicles in the path of the plows.

"They kind of just plow around them, so I don't blame the plow drivers, I blame the officials who need to come through and enforce that," she said. "Especially the first snowfall. If they know they got away with it the first time, then they're not going to move them the next time."

Spah said the city tags and tows vehicles as necessary, and enforcement has remained consistent. The city tows 1,000 cars and issues 3,000 citations in a typical snow emergency.

Lantry said towing cars isn't something the city likes to do; she's hoping improved communication efforts will get people to follow winter parking rules.

"We're looking for compliance and so our goal, my goal, is that we get the word out so that people do move their vehicles," she said.

The first two phases of St. Paul's snow emergency are over. But crews are still out sanding, salting and doing other mop-up work. And on Facebook and elsewhere the city is reminding residents that any vehicle still parked on a street that's not plowed fully is subject to ticketing and towing until 9 p.m. Saturday.