To keep the public up to date on snow removal efforts, the City of Hastings is launching an online snowplow tracking system. The tracking system gives the almost-real time location of city snow-removal vehicles, and identifies with a color coded system where snow-removal vehicles have been.
Two years ago, the city implemented AVL (Automatic Vehicle Locator) technology on city vehicles for safety and insurance reasons. The city has now expanded this technology as well as using data from the city GIS (Geographic Information System) software to display vehicles labeled as ‘snow removal’ and display their information to the public. The system also has a layer which tracks street sweepers using a larger timeframe.
A street will be colored green on the map if a snow-removal vehicle has been there in the previous 4 hours, blue if a snow-removal vehicle has been on a street in the previous 4-12 hours, yellow if a snow-removal vehicle has been the street in the last 12 to 24 hours, and red if it has been more than 24 hours since a snow-removal vehicle has been on the street.
