Upgrades with City of Bend Snow Removal

David Abbas, the City of Bend director of transportation and mobility, discusses the City’s current snow removal process and how additional equipment and employees will help bolster winter maintenance.

Source Weekly: What is the City’s responsibility’s when it comes to removing snow?

David Abbas: Public streets and right of ways are broken down into priority levels. When we first get a snowstorm, we prioritize our priority one roads for the snowplows or sanding. As far as snow plowing, we try to plow everywhere, curb to curb. The priority ones are really the main arterials. That’s Third Street, 27th Street, Empire. We really try to have that main network safe for travel, for EMS, commerce, goods and services and people getting to and from work. Sidewalks, per our code, are the responsibility of the adjacent property owner for the clearing of sidewalks in front of a house or business. Even though the code says the adjacent property owner is responsible for snow and winter maintenance and year-round maintenance… there is what I call “no man’s lands.” When you start thinking about the roundabouts, the pedestrian refuge islands, they’re not always a clear adjacent property owner. A bridge that crosses over the Deschutes River, for example. So, those areas we take care of.

SW: What are some of the new additions this past year?

DA: As part of our Transportation System Plan, one of the goals and desires of the community is better year-round maintenance, including winter or multimodal – bike or pedestrian – like the Wilson corridor project or the Greenwood quick build project, where there’s separated or protected facilities.

Our full-size snowplows and sweepers do not fit in that protected bike lane on Wilson. This year, we picked up a couple of small mini sweepers that do fit into those smaller facilities or protected facilities. We also purchased a couple of tool cats. It’s a little utility vehicle, kind of like a side-by-side with various attachments. There is smaller equipment that will fit into not only those protected bike lanes, but also be able to get up on like sidewalks or multi-use paths.

In recent years, we started carrying over some seasonal staff into the wintertime. Those seasonals could focus on those “no man’s lands,” roundabouts and bridges and things like that, pretty much day one of a storm. In the past, our CDL drivers, our snowplow drivers, would be out there trying to take care of the priority ones and twos and threes, so folks could get around. Those “no man’s lands” were kind of last priority or low priority. We really didn’t want to take a CDL snowplow driver out of a snowplow to go shovel out a pedestrian refuge on a roundabout.

Now we have four what we call Public Works labor positions, and then we’ll carry a couple of seasonals into the winter. So, we’re going to have a small team of six, which we’ll split those up into teams of two.

SW: How will these additions change the way that the City approaches removing snow?

DA: With the equipment we bought this summer… the transportation utility fee is an example of what’s helping provide some better service and that equipment. We’ll have three teams of two of them able to, day one of a storm, get out there and work on these protected bike facilities or paths in certain places.

With the Wilson corridor, for example, or the quick builders on Greenwood, we now have some small equipment that can fit into those areas. In the past we did not, and so that’s an example of the Transportation Fee helping us with resources to provide that higher level of service. This winter, we’ll be able to get in there. Those three teams of two staff members will be out on day one of a storm. That small group of six staff… their priority is out plowing the roads.

We have 48 roundabouts now, so we will dispatch those three teams of two to different areas within the city. But we’ll be efficient in the routing. The priorities would be the roundabouts, the bridges and once those are all in good shape, we would then focus on those 12 key bike and ped routes as defined in the Transportation System Plan.

This article appears in Source Weekly November 28, 2024.