Bengal News reporter
West Side residents know the routine: Monday through Wednesday park your car on the correct side of the road, Thursday and Friday make sure to be up at 9 a.m. to move your vehicle to the opposite side until 4 p.m. and on weekends feel free to park on either side.
This can be a difficult task in the winter when residents have to brush off their cars, shovel the driveway and pray that the plow comes to sweep up the streets. That is why the City of Buffalo is incorporating new technology and parking time changes to make snow plowing more efficient.
This winter, every snowplow will be connected to Buffalo’s global positioning system. It will allow supervisors to check the location of the plow, what speed it is going, how much salt is being used, and see if the plow is up or down. They will also be able to go back and see what location the plow was in hours before.
Larry Panaro, superintendent of Public Works Parks and Streets, said “If the GPS systems and parking changes in the other areas work well, we will be able to use it more effectively to allocate more resources on the West Side.”
The system will help supervisors track which streets have been plowed and which ones still need more attention. When the mayor’s complaint line receives calls from residents that their street has been left unplowed, the city can check the GPS to see if it has been there yet and where it needs to go next.
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| Salt in storage at the Broadway Garage |
Since the West Side allows for parking on both sides of the streets on weekends, it limits the city plows effectiveness in those residential streets.
Blair Woods, West Side resident and member of the City Bicycle Pedestrian Committee, said: “The biggest problem for this block is that if you happen to have a snowfall on Wednesday, then one side of the street never gets plowed. And the fact that if someone sleeps in or just doesn’t move their car, it ruins it for the whole neighborhood.”
Panaro felt the same way about the West Side weekend parking.
“The West Side has by far the highest concentration of streets in the city. The best we can do is go through the middle of the street but we can’t plow through the curb. The change in day and time in the other areas and the new GPS will help us facilitate our operation better,” he said.
Buffalo has 67 truck drivers and equipment operators to control the 56 snow plows and 16 high lifts that are ready for this winter.
Larry Panaro, on the salt supply for coming winter.
According to Panaro and a press release from the City of Buffalo, the Department of Public Works'Broadway Garage is also in the middle of constructing the streets operations office that will serve as the control center for the streets department during snow events.
“We will have a monitor up for each section of Buffalo. So if the West Side is having a snow plow emergency, we will be able to see it immediately,” Panaro said.
Edited by Tony Fiorello, Steven Jagord and Natalie Lleras
Before the Broadway Garage, (which is located at 197 Broadway Street) was the home for snowplows and ten thousand tons of salt, it was the historic Broadway Auditorium; and even before that it was the Broadway Arsenal. According to http://www.bisonshistory.com/broadway-auditorium.htm Buffalo's Broadway Auditorium was used for social gatherings and events including political and civil rallies, circuses, boxing, wrestling, and roller derby. The Broadway Arsenal was built on Sept. 5, 1898 and was then made into to a civic gathering hall in 1910. In the late 1940’s - AP the city turned it into the streets and sanitation department but some elements of the original buildings still stand.
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