WiscPlow---2005----Whatever happened to it?

In 2005 there was a GIS program to measure effectiveness of snow maintainance operations throughout the state of Wisconsin. Click on the post for the summary of the project.

As you might have guessed, one of the first areas of Wisconsin to opt out of the study was Trempeleau County, citing that they anticipated that there might be some increased costs coming. As one heads to the Twin Cities, when you see the Trempeleau County sign, or even if you cannot see the sign, you will know you are there by all the cars in the ditch. The resources of the county are simply not there for the maintanance of the freeway, and a driver coming into this area is at peril not knowing this.

There appear to be some improvements in technology coming---the 511 program, which relies on telephone is one. The other is the current MAP program used via the internet---evidentally there were so many hits to this program during the recent storm that it crashed several times. It is not clear whether this was because it needs an additonal server to sustain it in times of heavy workload, or what exactly the problem was. The report on the recent Hwy 90/39 incident did not go over details. Another issue is who is in charge of the data, and how it is responded to. The current responsibility chart is confusing. However, it would be nice if the navigation systems in all these mobile systems could pick up emergency notices and if there were roadside emergency digital information signs that could be activated alerting drivers to the latest.

The problem of resources still remains as I see it. I wonder about the resources from the Illinois border to Madison and whether the burden on local communities of providing salt etc and snowremoval is realistic as currently designed. We have an oil reserve nationally for disasters. Do we have a "salt reserve" also. When a community runs out, it is unrealistic to go to someone other than their regular supplier to get some precious salt---I wonder how this works now and how it could be improved. Recently Evansville and Union met to discuss some of these issues. This is part of the road maintainance equation and I wish it was discussed more in the recent incident report.