Inside Arvada

Inside Arvada's Snow Operations with Keith Bohan

• City of Arvada • Season 1 • Episode 18

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Learn about what it takes to help keep our roads safe and passable in the case of a snow storm. 

Hear from Streets Manager Keith Bohan about the City's snow plow operations. Keith shares information about the routes City teams plow, how they make decisions about deployments, what materials they use on the roads, and innovations the team uses like route optimization technology. 

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Visit us at ArvadaCO.gov/Podcast or email us at podcast@arvada.org.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to Inside Arvada, the City of Arvada's podcast, where we bring you conversations with the people who make Arvada a thriving community. Hear stories about the past, present and future of Arvada through the lens of the city team members who help make it all happen. Explore the complex topics impacting our community, from the roads you drive to the water you drink, the parks where you play to what your neighbors think. Join us as we take you Inside Arvada. Hello and welcome to this week's episode of Inside Arvada. We are really excited to have Streets Manager Keith Bohan on with us today as we enter the winter season and snow season. He's going to talk with us about all things snow plowing and snow operations here in the city.

Speaker 1:

And so Keith lives in Nevada with his wife and five kids. They actually met in high school in a foreign exchange program in Australia, keith being from the US and his now wife from Sweden, and so, born and raised in Connecticut, keith moved out here in 2013 and started working for the city in the streets department, where he still is. He began as a streets technician and then has worked his way up to a supervisory role, spent some time as the pavement management program manager and then became the streets department manager and, as always, I am joined today by my co-host, sean Starr. Hey, sean.

Speaker 2:

Hi, katie. Great interview today with Keith. It was really interesting to learn all the different materials that his team uses during snow events, and they have kind of a different game plan for different sort of storm events. Whether if the storm is colder, they have different salt material that they can put on, or if it's a little bit warmer, they can use a different sort of salt, and so that was one of the many interesting tidbits that I gained from our interview with Keith, and so with that let's kick it to the interview.

Speaker 1:

Hi, Keith, Thanks so much for joining us. So first just tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do here at the city.

Speaker 3:

So I'm the streets manager here at the city. Obviously we do snow removal and snow plowing. We also do asphalt and pothole repairs, street sweeping, we do the line striping and sign maintenance here in the city and sign maintenance here in the city. We also have concrete maintenance and repair that we do and then some storm drainage in our creeks.

Speaker 1:

Nice and about how big is your team.

Speaker 3:

Right now we're about 35.

Speaker 1:

That's what I was thinking, not a very big team for the whole city of all of those different roles.

Speaker 3:

No, in snow removal we do two 12-hour shifts. Full deployment for us is 15 trucks, so that takes up more than just our team. It also includes our water and wastewater departments as well.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so you're kicking us off. Well, snow season is here. We've already seen some snow this fall. Can you just explain a little bit more about you know you mentioned the 15 trucks and the 12-hour shifts, but a little bit more about what our snow operations entails.

Speaker 3:

On our website there's our map of our snow routes. We have priority one and priority two areas. They're made up of arterials and collectors. It's primarily to get people to move throughout the metro area to be able to get to where they want to go and then to get to and from their neighborhoods. We don't do every single street in the city, every local street. We do have right now a policy where we do. Over 12 inches of snow will go into every street, but that's not very common for us to do that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and that's usually yes. We rarely have storms that big or that stick around that long, and then that's when it takes approval of the city manager and typically gets contracted out. If it does happen, too right like we have to bring in extra resources to be able to even do that correct our resources would be working on our snow routes right through that time as well.

Speaker 3:

there are some some streets within the city uh wadsworth boulevard, sheridan, indiana highway 72 that are cdot maintained. So there are some roads that we don't do that are within the city limits, and then we do our around our school zones, which are areas that are to and from the schools. To be able to get people to and from those. We don't typically do our bus routes, and the reason why is because bus routes change every year so it'd be very complicated to try to make routes around those school bus routes.

Speaker 1:

Right, yeah, and just like going back just a second, the arterial roads you mentioned are like our main three roads in the city that aren't c dot, so, with wads and some of those other ones aside, it's like 80th avenue 72nd ralston road correct those like big roads that everybody takes all the time.

Speaker 1:

um and they're, and then um, and you can speak to this better but those are also identified in addition to the collector roads which we kind of talked about are like when you're, there's the road outside of your house that that's your local road and then you leave your house to get to an arterial road. Our neighborhoods kind of collect on what we call collector roads.

Speaker 2:

If I'm driving around Wazers Boulevard has a City of Arvada sign on it. That's not our road to maintain either summer or winter.

Speaker 3:

That's correct, and you'll still see our trucks on there because we use those to get to our other streets within the city. So you'll still see our vehicles on that road as well. They're just not ours to maintain, yeah.

Speaker 1:

So, like in the summer, if there's a pothole on Wadsworth, that's CDOT, not us, correct, yeah, so it can be kind of confusing because you're within the city. That's true of the county too. So anything that sometimes folks might feel like is in arvada we've talked about this a little before on the show but it's actually just unincorporated adams or jefferson county. It's the same situation where that's a county road to maintain um county traffic signal, whatever that might be. Um, yeah, okay, so that's a little bit of an overview of our snow operations. And then what can someone do if they see an issue on the road with snow or maybe ice accumulating or something like?

Speaker 3:

that we have a phone number it's 720-898-7725 that they can call us for snow related and we can get out there right away. If it's a safety, we can be there right away. We do have spots on our snow routes that we call our hot spots, and those are spots that we know of, where we tend to get calls. We mark those out every year and then we'll try to do things to mitigate those where we might be able to plow in a different way or have different material, a different truck that we can put out in different areas where we don't have those problems, but they still seem to come up every once in a while where we'll have to come back out and address those. Um, so we are aware of them, uh, but please give us a call, let us know where those are and we will get them addressed and I think the yeah part of that is to like based on safety concerns.

Speaker 1:

Right, it's kind of how you do that. It's not just that you know everybody has snow out in front of the road, on front of their house. It has to be some type of a severe more safety need.

Speaker 3:

So if we have thawing and then refreezing over sidewalks, we will come out and cut that ice out and remove that ice. If we have ice that's forming out into the center of the travel lane, we will come out and get those. But if it's just a pile of snow in the gutter of somebody's house that's not causing a safety concern, then we're just going to let those melt.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and we're lucky here that usually it melts pretty quickly. So in some of those areas. Do you go back to those areas more frequently? Do you change the frequency of the route to some of those areas, or is it more just that you know they exist?

Speaker 3:

We will, while they're on the map as a hot spot area that, uh, the drivers, the operators know to pay more attention to those areas and and monitor them if they do need to go back to them more often.

Speaker 1:

okay nice, um, and that. The other thing that's making me think of kind of back to just general snow plow operations was that, um, you all use, like you have, technology that you use to to map your routes and kind of know where your trucks are and stuff too.

Speaker 3:

Right, that's really cool so we have uh gps tracking on all of our vehicles. Um, that'll give us a speed the the material output, all of those sort of things. We've also recently done some route optimization work, which then makes us more efficient out on the road so that those vehicles it's kind of like you see in the big delivery companies how they have their route optimizations to make their deliveries more efficient, more right turns and things like that. So we did the same thing with our snow removal maps and what we're finding now this is a second year that we're using it we're finding that we're about 30 to 40% more efficient with our routing than we were before. So it's really being a benefit to us just using some of that newer technology.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's really cool. I was thinking we had talked about that recently and I couldn't remember exactly what the details are, so that's really cool. So then we know that weather can be pretty unpredictable. How do you all go about monitoring when a storm is coming in and what the road conditions are looking like, and when you go and deploy your operations?

Speaker 3:

So there's a lot of different methods. We use a lot of different websites, news organizations that we'll use for some of our forecasting. Cdot has a lot of different cameras around, so we'll use the Colorado Code Trip to watch some of the cameras and road conditions here in the city and different locations when the storm starts moving in. And then we also will rely on our own police department. They'll give us a phone call and let us know when it starts snowing. But our all fail-safe way is, when there's snow in the forecast we're up monitoring it and that could be driving around. Sometimes there's a whole night that we're out looking trying to make that determination. It's not something that we take easy, because a deployment is a big financial impact and it also takes a toll on our personnel, so we don't take that decision easy. But there's also the safety side of it that we have to keep in mind as well.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, definitely, and it's good to know that you all work closely with the police department in that way. Another piece of this which roads we prioritize and all of that is for our emergency response vehicles, to make sure they can still respond to emergencies when there's a storm, and that's an important part of what you all do. Also, just like something that goes so unseen and is so important is, like that's often, storm start in the middle of the night and you all are up in the middle of the night, it's three in the morning and you're like all right, sorry guys, everybody calling everybody in. Um, I think we we as lowly humans who sit at home cuddled up in our beds, can really take that for granted, right?

Speaker 3:

right and and our city, from the southeast corner to the northwest corner, is about a thousand feet difference in elevation, so we can see a snow deployment in some parts but not in others. So that's why it really takes a whole team, like I say, with PD and stuff involved, because we can't be everywhere at the same time. So to have them out and make the phone call to us is big.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's great Important work.

Speaker 2:

How does that work when it's like you're monitoring the weather and it's coming down but it's not sticking? But then all of a sudden it kind of crosses that threshold of we need to activate our team, and is it just like a big text that goes out email like the middle of the?

Speaker 3:

night Phone calls, so we make phone calls. We have a whole phone tree built out, so we make the phone calls and it goes out to everybody. It goes out to everybody, yeah.

Speaker 2:

And I would imagine team members are kind of not on notice but they're kind of ready, knowing that a storm might happen. So they're not like you know. They're aware that they might get called in at any point.

Speaker 3:

So when we see, when we see the chance of weather and the forecast, we'll make phone calls out the day before just to let them know this is this is what we're seeing. We're going to be monitoring. So, oh, this is what we're seeing and we're going to be monitoring. So be prepared that we're going to get a phone call If they want to have get things ready. So when they get the phone call they can be out and about quick.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I'm always curious too to learn the difference in snow accumulations across town, because I feel like the west side can sometimes get I don't know like six, seven more inches, because I live on the east side.

Speaker 1:

I'm like, oh, oh, this storm was kind of a bus, but then, nope, you know, west arctic got like 10 inches or something like that. Absolutely, yeah, that's, uh, probably more times than not the case really.

Speaker 1:

Right, it's like those heavier west maybe in particular. Um, so then another piece of the puzzle is the materials we use on the road, and you've been with the city a long time and you've maybe seen some of that change over time, and then I know it's kind of a continually learning process. So what are the different types of materials we use?

Speaker 3:

So when I first started the city, we used sand and then it was salt sand and we've we've strayed away from salt sand because of the dr cog brown cloud um in the denver metro area, so can you explain just a little bit what that is for sure.

Speaker 3:

Folks who might not know when we put out the sand. Um, after the storm, the cars continually drive over it and grind down the sand and make, uh, fine dust that hangs in our atmosphere for a long time and makes it look almost like smog in the area. So that came with requirements that if we use sand, that we have to pick that sand back up within 72 hours from when we put it down, which isn't feasible for us With the teams we have, with the equipment we have, we can't get to all of those streets and pick all that sand up. With the equipment we have there, we can't get to all of those streets and pick all that sand up. So we've switched. Now the same with the rest of the metro area switch to just salt products now that we can liquid de-icers, different things that we can use that don't have the sand.

Speaker 3:

So we have other than our plows, which I include in a equipment material equipment material that we use. It's a big part of our snow fighting. We have four main materials that we use. One is just regular rock salt that's mined out of Kansas and we bring that in and use that. That's our main product that we use for most of our storms. We do get some salt out of Utah, the Great Salt Lakes. It's a finer gradation of salt. It works really good but doesn't last as long. So we tend to try to mix some products together to get those.

Speaker 3:

We also use a salt that's kind of newer to the, to the, I guess, to the snow fighting. It's called ice kicker. It's a blue salt that we put out um and you'll see that when it comes out of the truck because it has that water soluble dye in it. It makes it a lot more visible, but it has a lot of chemicals in it that make it um better for the environment. Uh makes it less corrosive and it also works at lower temperatures for us. So it's a good product, but it has its place to use it.

Speaker 3:

And then another one we use is called Torch and it's a liquid product that we use in our tanks, on our trucks and that'll be used for either a pre-treat of the solid materials or direct spray on our roads. And then we do. We've just started recently making our own salt brine, so we'll make our own salt water solution and put it out before the storm. That's when the storm allows us to do that. So if we have a storm that starts out in rain or very wet snow, we will tend not to put that down because it'll wash off the roads real quick and it won't work. But when we have cold storms we've put it out and had it really work well for us. It breaks that cohesion between the snow and ice forming and the asphalt, so it scrapes off very easy. And that's our one product that we have that is anti-icing, versus the rest which are de-icing after the fact. So those are kind of our products that we use.

Speaker 1:

Nice and you mentioned the ice kicker, is for lower temperatures. Is that true of any of the other materials?

Speaker 3:

The liquid will work at a lot lower temperatures as well. But it's all a fine balance. During a storm we can shift between, and sometimes back and forth between, products multiple times during a storm, multiple times during a storm, and a lot of that comes with the financial impact of these products and trying to keep those roads clear. It's a constant balance for us. The environmental impacts, the financial impacts they all come into play during the storm.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that makes sense. It's kind of like a constant balance of like, what can we do to like keep our storm systems as clean, maybe, or what's going to cost us just too much? You know that I imagine that ice kicker is probably a more expensive product.

Speaker 3:

Correct it's like using it when it's the most valuable bang for your buck kind of thing constantly looking out for new products that are out there. You know there's always new things coming out and if we can find them, we're constantly trying stuff out. So these are what we found so far that worked for us.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think one thing I've learned like working with you over the years and just learning about how you're constantly improving, from the route optimization to like looking at different materials. I think it's just interesting to know and speaks to like for our listeners who don't know one of our city values of innovation, Like you all are constantly looking at how can that fit into our operations, as all of your streets operations. But I think particularly snow season is pretty cool and so this is a little bit outside of your work area. But our parks team also takes care of our parks, trails and cityowned sidewalks, and we would be remiss not to give them a shout-out this time of year too. But how do they do that work to manage those areas?

Speaker 3:

So they kind of have a similar approach, the way we do with the priorities they have for their routes and trails.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think, like you said, priority one is kind of connecting to schools and rec centers. That's kind of what they do a pass-through first and then, if there's time, then they move on to priority two. So a very similar sort of approach that streets would take.

Speaker 3:

Right, and they use obviously different equipment than we do in streets as well. A lot of their snow plows are smaller than ours, are for the trails and sidewalks, a lot more hand shoveling and snow blowers, um, so it's more labor intensive than than what we do. Um, a lot of them are their their own uh, their own mowers that they use. They convert them over to put plows on, uh, which is a good thing I was just picturing a push mower for some reason.

Speaker 1:

I was like how do you do that? No, the kind you drive you sit in.

Speaker 2:

Okay, we have a, uh, we have a video that we did, I think, last winter that we can link in the show notes and it shows all the a lot of the different kinds of uh tools that we use to, you know, clear sidewalks, because it is sometimes getting out there with a hand shovel and then making those trails clear, because we have a very active community and so people, you know, once that snow stops, people want to get out and use their trails and so, um, our team, just like your team it's really one big team right is getting out on those trails right after a storm. They're, they're not waiting around for that snow to melt, and I think parks.

Speaker 3:

They have the same uh maps on their website, like we do, right.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah. So again, we can link it in the show notes. But same sort of interactive map where you can zoom in, you can click on a snow clearing route. You can even see, like, what team in the parks team is assigned to that particular route. You can see what sort of priority level it is, and so, yeah, we'll include that in the show notes. And I believe combined team of the snow and ice control team last year was the city's team of the year, correct, right?

Speaker 1:

yeah, so congratulations to your team and the parks team on that very deserved honor and one that gets overlooked too that we should mention is our facilities team does some of this work too, to clear our parking lots and um sidewalks outside of our buildings and call and all that stuff too.

Speaker 1:

So, um, there's a lot of a lot of work that goes into that, and then also just worth clarifying that the sidewalk out front of your home or business is the sit is the property owner's responsibility to clear. So that's the one thing that the city doesn't do and I think folks are generally aware of that. But it is part of our city code and pretty common in most communities to clear the sidewalk out in front of your house to make sure your neighbors can push their stroller or walk their dog or, whatever the case may be, get to school, all those things. So, before we let you go, anything else that you'd like to share with folks about the work that you all do, we open this time too to clear up any misconceptions, if there are any. What else should folks know?

Speaker 3:

One of the big things I'd like to share with the community is, you know, we're a team, like I said, of about 35 individuals and we unfortunately can't see everything be everywhere. So we really do encourage our community to bring those things to us. When I hear somebody say there's a pothole, they've been driving around for a month on their street and they're frustrated. I am frustrated because you had to drive around that for a month. We'd love to get out there and fix it, but we need to know about it. So I'd like to pass on our streets department, main number 720 8, 9, 8, 7, 7, 2, 0. Um, and please reach out to us and let us know where those are. We will get them fixed. Um, you can use our own city website and put in a request on there. Um, and, and we, we can get right to it. Uh, but we, we, we. We don't want people to be, uh, frustrated with our streets. We'd like them to get them fixed.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think that's such an important piece and just kind of I don't know for me, like maybe this is cheesy, but it's like a little heartwarming to know that like the people who are working behind the scenes to do some of the stuff really care you know and like I think sometimes people forget that and that people are working hard to like try and keep our roads good or fill the pothole or, you know, do what we can where we can like limited resources.

Speaker 1:

We know that you know folks like have challenges with the road in front of their house all the time, with the quality of the road, but that's a whole nother conversation for another time. So, um, yeah, thanks for that. And then I know we have some um plowed tips. Do you want me to do those? Do you want to share some tips for us? Do you want to share some tips for us? Okay, well, we post these a lot so I know them pretty well.

Speaker 1:

But we try to have folks use off-street parking if you have a driveway or something, so that if you are on a plow route, right. So if you're on a street that does get plowed because it's a collector or an arterial road, if you can park off the street or just park on one side of the street, that really helps to get the plows through. And then not necessarily plow related, but when you're shoveling snow or blowing it, do that toward your lawn and not into the street. That both can help give your lawn a little bit of extra winter water, but it helps avoid the snow or ice build up in the roads and gutters and maintain the quality of our roads a little bit better. And then it's also in our city code. And then if you are behind a snowplow, just give them a safe distance, don't pass a snowplow, you know, and stay safe and help keep everybody safe.

Speaker 1:

And then we had an interview with Nick back in September now. But the other piece of the winter puzzle is just general emergency alerts and emergency awareness. So at the beginning of November when we had that big storm coming in that was getting a winter storm warning, if you're signed up for Lookout Alert you can get alerts about those storms coming in and just be in the know when maybe you need to pre-plan to get some food and pre-plan to be home for maybe a little bit longer amount of time. So that's lookoutalertco to get those notifications. So I would be remiss not to say those couple of things. Okay, off my soapbox of tips, sean, I'll pass it to you for the lightning round.

Speaker 2:

Those are some great tips, Keith. Before we let you go, we wanted to head to the lightning round, get to know you a little bit better, a little bit more personally. We'll start with question number one what is your?

Speaker 3:

favorite thing about Arvada, so I have five kids. One of our things that we really enjoy doing is off of Highway 93, the Pioneer site. There's a model airplane club up there. We like to go up there on weekends and watch the model airplanes take off and the kids get a real joy out of that and we can spend a couple hours up there just watching the little planes go around.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that is a very unique park, specially used park that the Arvada Air Modelers lease from the city and so if anyone hasn't checked that out, go out there. It's fascinating. There are little but they can go out there. It's fascinating, there are little but they can be very expensive plans. It's a very fascinating hobby there. What is your first, last or best?

Speaker 3:

concert. The last concert I went to was Alabama. I enjoy country music, so me and my wife were able to go and watch the concert and just enjoyed that Very nice.

Speaker 2:

And then what brought you to Arvada?

Speaker 3:

So I was born in Connecticut, I'm from the East Coast and my wife and I were out here visiting Colorado and just fell in love with it the weather, the people and just the general atmosphere of the area and I don't think we were home more than a week and we had made the decision we wanted to move out here.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I feel like I've heard that story several times before Out here, visiting and decided to come move out here. What was your first job?

Speaker 3:

I grew up in a family-owned general contracting business, so really that was, I mean, from the time I could walk that was my first job, you know, just living the business.

Speaker 2:

Right Learned a lot of valuable skills.

Speaker 3:

Oh yeah, and a lot that, uh, that comes through for today.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and then finally, uh, do you have a favorite project that you've done with the city?

Speaker 3:

Um, you know I it's probably around snow removal. You know, I know it's not really a specific project, but it takes such a team and the worst conditions, when nobody wants to do it, to bring everybody together and to achieve something that we can really see the results afterwards.

Speaker 2:

I was going to say maybe do you have a favorite storm that you've.

Speaker 1:

That's probably a good story.

Speaker 2:

I don't know if any of them are favorites, yeah you guys got tested early this year and did a great job, so that was probably pretty unique in that that big of a storm in november. I don't remember having one that that large of an event right, remember.

Speaker 3:

So it took a lot, of, a lot of uh hours yeah, that one awesome.

Speaker 2:

Well, keith, thank you so much for being a guest on Inside Nevada. I know our listeners are passionate about this topic and are appreciative to learn all you and your team does. Yeah, thank you. All right, before we let you go, we want to close with our news and events segment. As a reminder, we'd love to hear from our listeners. We encourage you to reach out to us, either by texting us there's a link in the show notes or you can always email us at podcast at arvadaorg, and be sure to subscribe, rate and review the show.

Speaker 2:

As far as news going on, we have our Trees Across Arvada annual sale going on, and this year the deadline has been extended to February 1st, and that's the annual sale that we do to put low-cost shade trees available for purchase for the community, and so we'll link to that, or you can search on Google Trees Across Arvada and you can order shade trees and then pick them up in April at the Majestic View Nature Center. The city's annual boards and commissions applications open on December 1st. We have six boards with vacancies for 2025, and those include festivals, parks planning, sustainability, transportation and the Retirement Plan. Board Applications are due January 6th and you can visit the webpage at arvadagov slash boards for more information. Katie, I know there's a water quality department news item as well department news item as well.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so our water quality department that's housed out at our water treatment plant is looking for some additional residents to do water sampling in their homes, and those homes have to be built between 1983 and 1987. So a pretty specific time range there. But whether you rent or own a home, if it's built between that time frame of 83 to 87, you can participate in the program and you get a credit on your water bill for just performing some simple sampling and then reporting the results to the department. So if you're interested in that and you meet the qualifications, you can reach out to the water quality department directly and their contact information is lcr at arvadaorg or 720-898-7800. And we'll put that information in the show notes as well. And so thank you again to today's guest streets manager, keith Bohan. We're really grateful for his time and everything he'll be doing helping to lead up this snow season.

Speaker 1:

Be sure to listen to our next episode. We mentioned last time we were going to have someone from our police department on, and so we have our VADA Police Department Public Information Officer, chase Amos, coming. We're going to talk about a variety of things happening in the police department, everything from general winter safety to some new facial recognition technology and much more. So we hope you stay in touch with us at the pot with the podcast, and you can, as always, visit us online at arvadagov slash podcast. You can subscribe to the show. Send us an email at podcast at arvadaorg to ask us your questions and they'll be answered next time and then, thank you, as always, to all of our listeners. Please promote the show to folks. We ask that you subscribe, rate and review the show. Share it with your friends and family, and today's podcast was recorded and edited by Arvada Media Services.

Speaker 2:

Today's fun fact is during the 2023-24 snow season, it included 16 storms.

Speaker 1:

2023-24 snow season it included 16 storms, 47,206 miles plowed and it took more than 5,000 hours of staff time and more than 5,400 tons of salt. Whoa you.