Sarah Eddy
All the city’s plows are dispatched from the Siler Road yard. Five plows purchased since 2015 handle the bulk of the workload.
Sliding toward the curb across ice and snow, wheels askew, traction control sensor beeping away in that you're-not-helping panicked tone, you may have wondered: "Doesn't anybody have a plan for plowing this town?"
They do.
In fact, back in September, before it was snowing as it did this week, the city's Public Works Director Javier Martinez was busy revising Santa Fe's snow and ice removal plan.
Depending on how much it snows, the city has what appears to be a detailed plan of attack for getting city streets clear and passable during a storm.
Anything up to 2 inches gets what a lot of people call "sanding," which is actually a mixture of salt and cinder. The city lets that ride instead of plowing it off because the longer it stays on snow and ice, the more good it does. Often, as it did this week, almost everything melts in a day or two.
The plow blades don't smack the asphalt until after a couple of inches accumulate, according to the plan. Then, a small fleet of city trucks lowers the plows and gets to work.
The city labels roads as priority one, two or three. One plow is assigned to each of five areas in the city, all of which have a separate priority list. There's usually only one plow on the streets in each area, because putting another one to work means a supervisor has to drive it. The city doesn't have enough drivers and supervisors to maintain round-the-clock staffing during storms, and get additional plows on the road.
There are also 26 ironically named "hot spots" around town that are on the must-plow list and get their own designated plow: Places such as the Don Diego-Cerrillos Road intersection, the hill on Jaguar Drive by Fire Station 8 and Apodaca Hill by Upper Canyon Road. Downtown, 23 streets get ice removed whether it's snowing or not.
The 24-page plan is comprehensive, but it relies on two things that have a tendency to break down. One is equipment.
The city has a dozen heavy-duty plows that also have attachments to spread the salt and cinder mixture. Five of those are new since 2015. The other seven are of early-'90s vintage. They break. The city plan says some of them are "in poor condition."
"This plan cannot be carried out effectively without all available equipment being ready at all times," the document says plainly, emphasizing that fixing snow maintenance machinery has to be the highest priority for the city's Fleet Maintenance Division.
The other thing that has a tendency to break down—at least according to the city—is the state's part of the deal.
Cerrillos, St. Francis, St. Michael's, a big chunk of Old Pecos Trail and Old Las Vegas Highway, the bypass, the road to the ski basin—all are the state's responsibility.
In big storms, the New Mexico Department of Transportation's District 5 crews focus on I-25. Other top priorities are Highway 599 (the Santa Fe bypass) and St. Francis Drive, which is a US highway. After that, they get to Cerrillos Road and St. Michael's Drive, Old Las Vegas Highway and Hyde Park Road.
But district officials admit I-25 gets the bulk of the attention during a significant event, and the state and US highways that double as city streets can go unplowed. The city picks up the slack, the plan says, because "our experience is that when these NMDOT facilities don't get properly plowed, the city gets the public criticism, and not NMDOT."
A major storm can put extra strain on city resources, and Martinez says he's already let city councilors know that a big winter could lead to extra costs for overtime and more salt and cinder mix for the roads.
“The coordination between DOT and the city is better than it was in the past,” Martinez tells SFR the day after the most recent storm. He used to work for the state and still has relationships there that can help open communication channels. The city has not asked the state to reimburse it for staff time or material costs in the past.
Source: City of Santa Fe
