Jan. 7—City crews are nearing completion on emergency snow routes and ramping up secondary roadwork amid record snowfall.
A 24-hour cycle of snowplowing reached its second full day on Tuesday, Jan. 7, following a massive weekend blizzard that blanketed St. Joseph in 13 to 16 inches of snow.
“We’re tracking pretty decent to get to the emergencies. I believe we had three or four (trucks) that were touching up,” said Jackson Jones, the City of St. Joseph’s superintendent of streets and infrastructure. “The supervisor will drive those, make sure they’re cleared properly and then we’ll release them.”
Emergency routes throughout the City are organized into 11 sections, called route books, that cover nine routes. These routes help provide clear paths to main roads, along with access to hospitals, emergency facilities and critical infrastructure, making them the first priority.
Jackson Jones, superintendent of streets and infrastructure, said a normal snow event with three to six inches typically requires 24 to 36 hours for emergency routes to be plowed, but a record 13 to 16 inches of snow combined with subzero overnight temperatures has added challenges to the process, including delays and equipment failures.
“Most of our trucks are a single axle, five-ton dump truck and you’re pushing and just grinding on that rear end all night,” Jones said. “You start blowing rear ends up, you start breaking springs. We were having a heck of a time with windshield wiper blades.”
Despite that, the City is looking to have all of its emergency routes cleared by the end of the day Tuesday, allowing the department to spread out their fleet of 22 trucks across secondary routes. Personnel consists of 16 daytime drivers, 8 night-time drivers, six mechanics and two loader operators.
“We have four books of secondary’s out right now and one of those came in completed just before I left,” Jones said. “Your secondary’s are designed to have everybody in town within two blocks of a plowed road, and then your districts would be the remainder districts that end with culs de sac.”
Still, it could be days before all areas are clear. St. Joseph has approximately 435 centerline miles of roadway to plow, the same distance as traveling from St. Joseph to Chicago, Illinois.
“When you’re plowing, you’re only clearing one lane. The 435 centerline miles probably equates to more like 1,100 or 1,200 miles of plowing. You get to a road like 36th Street, that’s four lanes and you’re effectively pushing that four times,” he said.
The Missouri Department of Transportation also maintains a large number of roadways and routes, including Interstate 29, Highway 36 and 169 Highway (Belt Highway).
Other transportation routes maintained by MoDOT
* Route 6 from Frederick Ave to Belt Highway East
* Route AC — Riverside from Frederick to South Belt Highway
* Loop 29 — Pear Street from South Belt Highway to Garfield Avenue
* 752 — Mason and Alabama
* 759 — Stockyards Express Way from HWY 36 to just South of Lower Lake Road
* Highway 59 — everything except from Atchison Street to Virginia Street, which is City maintained
* Highway 59 — everything north except for St. Joseph Ave from Middleton north to Krug Park Place
* Rochester Road from Belt Highway to I-29, looping around Speedy’s