Shown above is an Akron plow clearing a residential street Jan. 19 in Ward 7 following a recent snowstorm.
Pictured above is a car parked on Ireland Avenue in Ward 7 that was plowed in with snow. The City of Akron often initiates a parking ban during heavy snow events. Photos: Eric Poston
AKRON — In 2019, City of Akron officials announced a five-point snow and ice improvement plan to improve the level of service for residents following a January snowstorm that dumped 8 to 12 inches of snow on the city. Following that storm, city officials issued an apology, stating, “The level of service we provided has fallen short of what our residents rightly expect.” Some of the improvements in the plan included ending a maintenance contract for highways with the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT), purchasing more plow trucks and equipment, creating better access to salt, revising routes, enhancing training and improving policies and technology. The plan was put to the test recently when a snowstorm brought over a foot of snow to the city and surrounding area Jan. 16-17. According to the National Weather Service Office in Cleveland, the Akron-Canton Airport received 13.6 inches of snow over the two-day period. Akron Director of Public Service Chris Ludle said crews began pretreating roads with brine two days prior to the storm and then pretreated with rock salt prior to the snow beginning Jan. 16. Ludle said the city divides routes into three priorities. First-priority routes include main roads, bus routes, roads near hospitals and schools, and hills. Second-priority routes include collector streets and third-priority routes include residential streets. Once the snow began, Ludle said the response at first was salting the first- and second-priority routes. Plowing began around midnight Jan. 17 on the first-priority routes and continued into the morning. At 8 a.m. Jan. 17, crews started plowing the second-priority routes, but crews had to return to the first-priority routes as additional snow fell, Ludle said. The second-priority routes were completed by the end of the day and crews then began the third-priority routes. Ludle said clearing of all residential streets began at midnight Jan. 18 and was completed by noon Jan. 19. Throughout the storm and following it, city officials posted several updates on the city’s Facebook page updating residents on the plowing progress. Residents commented on the page raising concerns about their street not being plowed, vehicles getting stuck and parked cars not being moved off the street. “The five-point snow and ice plan has been a huge success in helping us to better address winter storm events such as this one,” Ludle said. “While there is always room to improve, overall we are pleased with our response to this storm. Ending our contract with ODOT allows us to focus exclusively on the city, and optimizing the routes by clustering the first, second and third priorities has allowed us to better concentrate our efforts and resources and easily move between adjacent routes.” Ludle added the city currently has 55 5-ton trucks and 10 1-ton trucks, which is six more than the city had in 2019, as the city purchased three new 5-ton trucks and three 1-ton plows in 2020. “We’ve ordered an additional 10 new 5-ton plow trucks and seven new 1-ton plow trucks; however, the delivery of those has been delayed due to supply chain issues caused by the pandemic,” Ludle said. “Once we have that new equipment, that will absolutely help speed up our response, as we won’t have to spend as much time on maintenance with aging equipment.” The city has around 100 full-time operators, 30 part-time operators and around 70 auxiliary operators (commercial driver’s license operators in other departments/divisions that help out after hours), he said. In previous years, the city had approximately 40 part-time operators. “We’ve been impacted this year by pandemic staffing issues like most other cities, but we are still fully staffed,” Ludle said. “We just have less backups than in previous years.” Since 2019, the city also has offered enhanced training for plow operators, which was a step in the five-point plan, he added. “The city received over 6,000 311 requests during this storm response,” Ludle said. “We respond to those as part of our route responses, when we will be plowing and salting all city streets as we did for this event, or in the case of an emergency request we would send a truck as soon as possible.” Council members respond The West Side Leader reached out via email to all 10 Akron ward Council members to gauge the snow removal response in each ward and received a response from five members. Councilman Shammas Malik (D-Ward 8) said he thought the snow removal process had gone fairly well considering the amount of snow the area received. He said over two dozen residents reached out to him raising concerns regarding snow plowing. Malik credits the service department for doing a good job and believes city officials communicated well with updates about the plowing progress. Councilman Donnie Kammer (D-Ward 7) said that according to the phone calls, emails, texts and Facebook messages he received, the response was “very slow and horrible.” He said he does not feel improvements have been made since the five-point plan was released in 2019 and a vast majority of residents he talked with questioned the plan. “It makes me proud that residents question the five-point plan because I know they are paying attention to our local government and the decisions we are making,” Kammer said. Councilwoman Nancy Holland (D-Ward 1) said the storm dropped a lot of snow in a short period of time and she was on the phone nearly nonstop for 48 hours during and after the storm assisting residents. “It was just so much [snow],” Holland said. “It was like trying to pour the ocean through a funnel.” She added the city’s service department was “super responsive” to the concerns she forwarded to them. Holland does have concerns about the response, wondering if plow driver staffing was an issue. She also thought the 311 phone capacity was “really shaky” and she would like to look into expanding the call capacity, if possible, in the future. Councilwoman Sharon Connor (D-Ward 10) said overall the plowing response was quite good in her ward and she received fewer than 50 calls for service and was able to forward them to the service department. “There were some concerns with people calling into 311 and not being able to connect,” Connor said. “I was able to have many of those residents reach out to me and I would forward their information via computer to 311.” Councilman Brad McKitrick (D-Ward 6) said 38 residents reached out to him and he thinks the response has greatly improved from 2019 in his ward. He said many of the repeat complaints he receives are from residents on short, dead-end streets. Parking ban concerns City officials issued a snow-emergency parking ban, which began Jan. 16 at 8 p.m. and remained in place until Jan. 20. Despite the parking ban, numerous cars throughout the city were not moved off the street and were plowed in during the process of clearing streets. Kammer said the parking ban needs to be enforced, and he told residents to call the Akron Police Department (APD) if they saw parked cars on their street. “Residents said dispatchers said they weren’t going to send officers out,” Kammer said. “This is one of the exact questions I asked of the police department when the five-point plan was presented to Council and I was told APD would schedule additional officers to work during the snow event to enforce the bans so regular patrol officers wouldn’t have to be distracted from patrolling.” Ludle said the parking ban gives the city the authority to tow/fine vehicles that remain parked on the street. “We do try to use that as a last resort as we are aware that the ban isn’t always equitable for residents who may not have anywhere to park beyond the street and making residents walk long distances through a winter storm is also not safe,” he said. “When we absolutely need a car moved in order to safely and effectively perform plowing operations, we will tow them.” Malik said there were several instances in his ward where portions of streets were not plowed because of parked cars. He wants to see additional messaging to get the word out about the parking bans when they are issued. “When we are going to have snow, folks need to move their cars off the street,” Malik said. Holland said some areas in her ward have a shortage of off-street parking and some residents do not have driveways. McKitrick said the parking ban is a tough situation because APD call volume increases when snow is piling up. “A car on the street suddenly becomes less important,” he said. “Also, towing those vehicles becomes difficult because tow companies are out with APD on those increased calls. Those cars do cause a problem for the plow drivers and potentially for emergency vehicles.” Future changes Ludle said the city has a new enhanced Automated Vehicle Location (AVL) system, which officials would like to expand. “We would like to implement an online tracking tool and that’s been part of the plan since we developed the five-point plan,” he said. “It’s still a work in progress, as many of the city’s software systems and AVL systems were recently upgraded and replaced. Moving forward, Council members agree there is room for improvement, and Malik said he would like to see as much information as possible made available to residents regarding the snow removal process. “If it is going to take two days, we should tell folks two days,” he said. An idea he has is to have an online mapping system where residents can see where plow trucks have been and where they will be next on a route. Holland said she would like to see city officials keep residents informed and provide them with a schedule and timetable of when plows will arrive. “If they [residents] have a good idea what reasonable expectations are, that goes a long way,” Holland said.
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