Planning to clear snow from roads during a pandemic

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Narrator: It's time for Talking Michigan Transportation, a podcast devoted to the conversations with people at the forefront of the ongoing mobility revolution. In the state that put the world on wheels, here's your host, MDOT Communications Director, Jeff Cranson.

Jeff Cranson: Welcome to the Talking Michigan Transportation podcast. Today I’m really pleased to have with me Gregg Brunner who is the director of our Bureau of Field Services. That means he pretty much oversees all of MDOT construction and maintenance and that includes winter maintenance, which means snow plowing. The main reason I’ve asked Gregg on today is to talk about some contingency plans, something that he probably never anticipated when he took this job— that he'd have to plan for what if there is a outbreak of a pandemic and he has to scramble to find drivers to cover certain roads. So, Gregg, thanks for coming on and taking time to do this.

Gregg Brunner: Thanks for having me, Jeff.

Jeff Cranson: So, talk first about—before we get into those contingencies and the planning you're having to do, how you coordinate maintenance across the state because in some counties the state trunk lines are plowed by county contract forces and in others MDOT has their own direct forces out there. So, could you talk about that?

Gregg Brunner: Sure, so overall, MDOT maintains roughly 9,700 lane miles of roadway throughout the state, and in order to maintain that it takes a significant effort. So, what we do is MDOT direct forces maintain about 25 percent of those roadway miles and then we contract out with local agencies and municipalities to handle, for the most part, the rest of it. So, MDOT has about 30 maintenance facilities around the state and then we have contracts set up to partner with 62 county road commissions and 170 municipalities around the state which, more or less, we pay to handle winter maintenance or other types of maintenance throughout the year on certain segments or roadways. What that comes down to is you have quite a few different parties out there when it comes to winter maintenance, so it's important that we keep communication as a key throughout the whole effort out there. Again, that's where it gets on kind of into this plan moving forward on what we can do to maintain a consistent level of service around the state.

Jeff Cranson: So, that sets up how we do things and how things are coordinated. So, talk now about, you know, this once in a century pandemic and how that's had to affect your planning for going into this winter season. So far, we haven't had any major snowfall. We had a little bit in southeast Michigan and early on a little bit in the U.P., but even it's pretty much dried up there, too. We know it's coming, and we know that there's that possibility that you're going to have, you know, workers who are sick, so how are you planning for that?

Gregg Brunner: So, what we did at MDOT is we came up with a overall winter contingency plan on how we would respond in the event that there were some illnesses that popped up with staff in the garage, or if we had to close garages, or if we had to close multiple garages. Unfortunately, there's so many different variables that fall into place with hundreds of different garages and staff out there that a lot of these are high levels, so we couldn't cover everything. Overall, it kind of sets the stage for a process in place that we can handle pretty much whatever's thrown at us, and overall, this contingency plan kind of focuses on three different areas: number one, and most importantly, is just prevention, you know, anything we can do to stop people from getting sick or spreading the virus itself, and number two, is just communication between everyone that's involved. Like I said, there's a lot of contract counties and municipalities involved in our efforts, so keeping everybody engaged as things change throughout the process, and kind of last is prioritization of work in the event we need to potentially move to a reduced level of service because, like I said, if garages or others are not able to be out plowing snow. So, again, that plan kind of focuses on those three key things.

And just to dive into a little bit more detail there, when we start talking about prevention, each facility has their separate covet kind of screening safety criteria in place which looks at, more or less, operationally how can we handle things better to keep folks safe. That's everything from social distancing to temperature screening as people come into work and those types of things. When we start talking about prevention itself many would feel that, you know, being alone out in the snow plow that's about as much social distancing as you can do, so it should be safe out there. But there are those types of interactions that happen within the garage throughout the day or work shifts, you know, prior to the shift or after where some of those interactions happen. One of the key things that we looked at was while they're alone in the snowplows themselves, typically every garage has a front end loader that they load salt with out of the salt sheds where the drivers would get out of the truck, get in the loader, and then fill up their truck and then get out on the roadways plowing and salting out there. So, again, this was one of the common points we looked at. We developed cleaning protocol, both for that loader and each of the winter maintenance trucks that we have out there. In addition to that, what some of the areas are doing is actually dedicating a person just to run that loader for their entire shift to more or less reduce that potential interaction there to help control the spread. Again, there are other CDC screening criteria we are following, but anything we can do to prevent that from happening is the best preventative measure we can have out there.

Jeff Cranson: You know, what are you hearing from—I guess the counties and cities obviously have to be thinking about the same things and their roads are separate responsibilities, but obviously, you know, you talk to these folks and have an ongoing dialogue. So, do you feel like everybody's kind of adequately preparing for the worst?

Gregg Brunner: A lot of that gets down our communication and we start talking with those contract agencies. A lot of them already have these plans in place and have throughout, more or less, since COVID has kind of come on strong within the state. So, many of them already have those in place as well as mutual aid agreements with adjacent counties or municipalities that they'd be willing to cover over there in the event these types of circumstances happen, so that's something that a lot of those folks already had in place. I think overall what this gets down to is just increased communication by everybody that's involved, and that's something we've been working with, you know, the County Road Association on and each of the counties involved in our maintenance is that we need to kind of increase things because, as you know, with the virus things can change quickly. We can go from everybody planning to come into a shift to where one person gets sick and then we potentially have to quarantine, you know, which has major impacts quickly. So, by having a lot of that communication structure in place and people aware that things may be changing, you know, that's kind of our step two and how we can respond to things.

Jeff Cranson: I was just going to say that we don't know what this winter is going to hold in terms of traffic. I mean, you know, immediately after the outbreak in the spring traffic was down as much as 60 percent across the state. It gradually bounced back and was back to about 90 percent going into the winter, so if we assume that there's still going to be, you know, not as many people but a lot of people on the roads, and a lot of those people are people that are out because they have to report to their jobs. They're the kinds of jobs that they can't work at home, and they're either first responders or medical workers or, you know, delivery trucks getting food and important supplies to grocery stores. So, you know, plowing and keeping the roads clear is going to be more imperative than ever and that challenge is always there. We've come to expect that, you know, if it takes me 20 minutes to get someplace that it should be that way 12 months of the year. I know that it puts a heavy burden on you and your forces to think about. How do you talk about how to keep that focus and how important it is that the roads are cleared?

Gregg Brunner: Well, when it comes down to clearing the roads in the winter, of course safety is the department's number one priority for everybody involved. A lot of that comes down to not only with our internal folks on, you know, doing their part to help keep the roads clear, but we also remind motorists out there to follow Michigan’s basic speed law, which requires them to drive as careful and prudent speed in all conditions. So, while the speed limit may say 70 miles an hour out there depending on the roadway conditions you may have to drive a little bit slower that, so we asked them to give themselves a little bit of extra time in the winter just to be able to accommodate for some of those unknown conditions. Overall, when you start looking at our workforce, they are some of, in my opinion, they’re some of the true heroes at MDOT. They're the ones that are out working in the worst weather conditions to keep the roads safe and clear for everybody to keep, like you said, the mobility and that economy of Michigan moving forward.

Jeff Cranson: Well, and that speed, you know, that's kind of where I was going with that. We know that from the folks at Michigan State Police and other agencies, while all the reports aren't in yet for 2020 there's anecdotal evidence that one of the reasons that there have been more fatalities even though there were fewer cars on the road is because speeds are up. People have been driving fast starting with the spring when there weren't as many vehicles out there, and, you know, the highways seem clear and that kind of carried over. So, we have to hope that doesn't carry over into the winter when you really do need to slow down. So, let's talk a little bit about, you know, other things that are new this year. There's some legislation in asking us to take a look at some different things and that's another perennial issue. Is there a better way to melt the ice to keep the roads clear? Can you talk a little bit about that?

Gregg Brunner: Sure, one of the things we're looking at is kind of a new innovation where we partnered with the Montcalm County Road Commission to more or less test out a liquid mostly route. What that means is when it comes down to salt usage everybody thinks that salt's going to save the day in terms of clearing the roadways and everything out there, but we've looked at what some other states have tried and are trying to bring a best practice into Michigan where instead of strictly putting down rock salt or pre-wetted salt, we switch to more of a chloride brine that's put directly on the roadway as a liquid. What that does is number one, it reduces the amount of salt usage we have which is a significant cost savings, but again it gets things activated a little bit quicker. Again, this will be a liquid mostly route. There are certain conditions where that may not work if the temperatures get too cold, but it's something we want to pilot in Michigan to make sure it's effective. Again, it's going to be a significant cost savings and it's been proven in other states to be an effective counter measure to snow and ice in the roadways.

Jeff Cranson: Is it going to save us money in the long run?

Gregg Brunner: Yep, because right now salt is coming in at about $60 a ton is what we spend, and we start looking at overall as a state we utilize about a half million tons of salt, which is about $30 million in salt we utilize every year on MDOT roadways. That's a significant cost out there and what other states have seen by utilizing this approach is that it actually cuts that salt usage significantly, which in turn is a cost savings and not only that, it's better environmentally just from avoiding getting that salinity into the grass and waterways out there.

Jeff Cranson: Yeah, that's a huge issue, obviously, anything we can do to minimize the amount of salt that makes its way into the waterways is a good thing. Talk a little bit about when salt just doesn't work because, as you know, that's another issue that every time there's a major storm and the temperature gets down, you know, basically into the single digits we see people, you know, spinning out losing control on roads and ramps to freeways. The first question they always ask is why wasn't that salted, and it probably was at one point maybe before the temperature dropped, but can you talk about, you know, what's in play there?

Gregg Brunner: Sure, so salt will always melt ice, but as it gets down colder and colder into the low teens or below that the effectiveness it has really slows down. Where it gets down to more—less than a pound of a pound of salt will not melt less than a pound of ice. It's kind of a curve where it really drops down and becomes less effective as things go. We do work on different types of measures where we pre-wet salt with a calcium chloride which has a lower freezing point than just standard salt so that that aids things. Again, as we see those colder temperatures it gets more and more difficult for folks to clear a lot of that ice and snow off the roadways.

Jeff Cranson: And calcium chloride, I mean, does add to the costs, doesn't it?

Gregg Brunner: Correct, that's a liquid additive that we pre-mixed with a lot of our salt before it goes down.  Not only does it help in those colder temperatures, but, again, it avoids some of that the bounce and scatter that may happen when salt comes out the truck so that we keep more of that salt on the roadways.

Jeff Cranson: So, in addition to, you know, that pilot plan in Montcalm County and we think will probably yield some positive results and some innovations going forward in recent years, you know, we've added more tow plows, which increases the efficiency, obviously, of plowing being able to do freeways and shoulders, you know, in a quicker amount of time. Green lights are more prolific now I think on both, you know, local plows and on MDOT plows. We found that those are more effective, that people see those, you know, go from the eye to the brain more quickly and that's a good thing in terms of safety. I mean, what else do you think we should be looking at and recognizing as far as innovations in recent years in in plowing and winter maintenance?

Gregg Brunner: Okay, you know, one of the key things we're doing in addition to those that you had mentioned is we also have a Maintenance Decision Support System. What that does is many of our plows are upfitted with pavement temperature sensors on those, and those, using their GPS coordination, tie into an overall database that gives a specific weather forecast for the route that they're traveling on, as well as recommendations on where, when, and how much salt or materials should be applied or if they shouldn't be applied at that time. Again, it's a radar driven system that is able to predict those types of things and kind of continues to grow in knowledge moving forward, so that's something that's on display at a lot of the garages. It’s discussed prior to shifts and also is available in some of the trucks that we have out on our roadways. Again, from a technology standpoint it's getting pretty high tech in how we handle snow out there, and when you get into some of our snowplows it almost looks like you're in a cockpit of an engine or a jet engine.

Jeff Cranson: Yeah, there's a lot more going on. A lot more buttons and lights than there used to be, huh?

Gregg Brunner: Yep, it's quite a bit different.

Jeff Cranson: So, you know, given that we're going to be in the throes of the Rebuilding Michigan plan come spring and the governor's, you know, $3.5 billion dollar commitment to really make a difference and not just fix but replace a lot of freeway pavement around the state. How do you think that factors into to winter maintenance this year? I mean, we'll be coming right out of out of snow season and into that heavy building time. Is that transition going to be particularly challenging this year?

Gregg Brunner: Well, as you know, in Michigan the winters vary from year to year, so assuming it's a short, you know, an average winter where we get done and things start to wrap up in March, then we can kind of roll right into the construction season and in mid-April when a lot of our contractors get back to work out on some of those heavy projects in the roadways. So, right now we don't anticipate it being a concern but, you know, the way 2020 has been so far you never know what to expect moving forward.

Jeff Cranson: Yeah, well, I think that things are bound to be better this spring anyway as we get into the later spring, and I think that your folks are probably really looking forward to ramping up on those projects. Well, thanks, Gregg, this was helpful. I hope that these contingency plans that we talked about for COVID outbreaks, you know, never have to be pulled out.

Gregg Brunner: Yeah, I agree, but I guess I’d just like folks to know that we do have those in place in the event we need them, so we're doing as much as we can proactively. Then based on these plans we have in place we're ready to respond and kind of do the best we can as necessary.

Jeff Cranson: Okay, good, thanks again.

Gregg Brunner: Thanks for your time, Jeff. I appreciate it.

Jeff Cranson: Thanks again for listening to this week's edition of Talking Michigan Transportation, and I want to give a special thanks to Cory Petee, who does the sound engineering for the podcast, and to Sarah Martin, of MDOT, who does the show's intro and closing.

Narrator: That's a wrap for this edition of Talking Michigan Transportation. Check out show notes and more by subscribing on Apple podcast.

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