Rapid City
t the Nov. 26 Public Works Committee meeting, Jesse Reid, the cityngineering street superintendent, presented the city epartment's winter storm operations and described priorities, equipment and material use and a new approach to downtown snow removal.

Reid said streets are treated in priority order: arterials and emergency routes (including steep grades and major intersections) first, then collectors and school routes, and residential streets last. "The initial service of streets during the snow and ice incident will be the applications of sand, salt, liquid deicer," he said, describing three service levels tied to snowfall: level A (about 2 to 4 inches), level B (4 to 6 inches) and level C (greater than 6 inches).

Reid described the fleet and staffing the city deploys: 19 full-time sander/plow trucks, 13 dump trucks converted for winter operations, four blades, four loaders, several pickups with brine tanks and a total of 31 available drivers (24 day drivers and seven for the night crew). He said the city expanded from 19 snow routes to 21 this year to keep pace with growth.

On materials, Reid explained the city's use of brine (a saltwater pretreatment mixed to 23.3 percent) and a beet-juice additive that helps the salt work at lower temperatures and makes the mixture stick to pavement. "Brine is a it's a pretreatment that we put on the roads before storm to stop the snow from sticking," he said. He added that brine requires lead time to be effective and that last year the city purchased a brine maker; a mixing table was to be delivered the following week. Reid said the brine maker standardizes the 23.3 mixture, saves labor and reduces salt costs (he said the machine saves about $50 per ton of salt).

Reid gave operational figures: the city pretreats about 300 lane miles per event with roughly 24,000 gallons of brine; the city applies about 240,000 gallons of brine annually. He said the city uses roughly 5,000 tons of salt (10 million pounds) on roads during the season and about 700 tons of sand that crews must later sweep up. Reid also said the city has just over 2,000 total lane miles and roughly 400 mainline miles to cover during storms.

On downtown procedures, Reid said the ordinance defines the downtown boundary and that when a snow-removal alert is declared by the public works director or mayor, cars must be off streets between 2 a.m. and 8 a.m. During those hours the city performs full curb-to-curb removal. "What we're changing this year is we are going to plow the snow to the middle lane...we're gonna just load it up into dump trucks and haul it to...the snowball, that empty lot behind Taco John's," he said, describing the plan to haul downtown snow to a designated staging lot.

In a follow-up question about contractor bidding, a committee member asked whether subcontractors bid by the hour or by tonnage; Reid said contractors bid by the hour and equipment type (blade, dump truck, side dump), including driver cost, and gave example hourly figures. After questions the committee thanked Reid for the presentation and moved to adjourn.

The department said it will continue to refine operations and conduct a planned route- and rate-related review separate from the presentation.