Episode 152: CLEAR ROADS - 2026 National Briefing

This National Briefing segment is presented by Danny Varilek South Dakota DOT and features the Clear Roads Pool Fund Study. Clear Roads’ work focus is on all things winter maintenance and includes management of the Qualified Product List (QPL) for roadway deicers. 

Check out their work and get more information about Clear Roads at their website https://www.clearroads.org/  or by emailing Danny Varilek at daniel.Varilek@state.sd.us or Greg Waidley at greg.waidley@ctcandassociates.com

Watch the video and presentation along with all the other briefings on our YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@Talkinwinterops or listen on the Talkin Winter Ops podcast at https://transportation.org/winter-weather-management/sicop-talks-winter-ops/ or wherever you get your podcast content.

Sign up for email notifications on future episodes and other communications associated with winter maintenance and winter weather management by clicking on subscribe on the Talkin' Winter Ops website at TalkinWinterOps.com

Thanks for listening in and stay safe out there!

Transcript

Rick 0:11

Welcome back to Talkin Winter Ops. It's that time of year again when we sit down with other organizations working in winter maintenance to catch up on what they've been doing this past year. I'm Rick Nelson, and I'll be your host for the 2026 National Winter Maintenance and Road Weather Briefing Series. These briefings give us an opportunity to catch up with our partners in winter maintenance and road weather, learn about what they've been working on over the past year, and hear about their plans for the future. More importantly, they give you a chance to see how these ideas, tools, and initiatives might fit into your own operation. Before we get started, I'd like to recognize the organizations that make these briefings possible. First, a big thank you to the Ashto Winter Weather Management Technical Service Program, the sponsor of Talk and Winter Ops, its parent committee, the Ashto Committee on Maintenance, and its close partners in the Maintenance Operations Technical Working Group. And of course, thanks to the state DOTs whose annual contributions to the Winter Weather Management Technical Service Program make it all possible. So grab your favorite beverage, settle in, and let's catch up with our partners across the country to hear about what's new and what's coming up next.

SPEAKER_02 1:31

Hi, I'm Jud Falgren, State Maintenance Engineer for the Minnesota Department of Transportation. And for the last 14 years, I've been actively involved in the snow and ice community at the state DOT. And over the years, I've seen no shortage of new technologies, products, and ideas come along. The challenge often isn't finding information, it's figuring out what really works and what makes sense for your organization. As someone who's been involved with the program for these many years, I've come to appreciate the role the Ashto Winter Weather Management Technical Service Program plays in helping agencies answer those questions. One of the things that I've always valued most is that this just isn't theory. It's practitioners helping practitioners. It's a chance to learn from the experience of others. Avoid reinventing the wheel, and tap into a network of people who understand the same challenges that we face every winter. I've seen firsthand how these ideas and relationships built through this program have helped agencies improve safety, efficiency, and service to our traveling public. And with a modest annual contribution, your agency can take advantage of the same resources, webinars, workshops, and peer networks that have made this program so valuable to me over the years. If you're not already involved, I really encourage you to take a look at the Ashto Winter Weather Management Technical Service Program. Visit transportation.org forward slash winter-weather-management. You may find the answers to a challenge you're dealing with today. Or the next idea that really helps you move your winter operations forward.

SPEAKER_00 3:39

Well, thanks, Rick. Yeah, so just uh what's kind of going on this year or so far is uh um right now we're up to uh 39 member states, but as we know with the weather, that's kind of been slowly migrating more to the southern region, uh southern boundary regions. We actually uh reached out to Georgia and North Carolina to see if they would be interested in joining the crew. So we invited them to our spring meeting and came up, and so we possibly they may be uh wanting uh joining the clear roads here shortly. So uh so they really want to learn more of the winter research, what's going on, just in that way they don't have to reinvent the wheel on a lot of stuff. Uh just see what we have for training and then also help them out with uh some research and development. So that's kind of something new that we're kind of doing, just bringing that in. Um, we do have one more state we're trying to get also involved, uh Tennessee, because they've been heavily affected by a lot of that freezing rain and and stuff like that. So just kind of that that southeast corner. Um, we've been reaching out, and so hopefully we can kind of get Tennessee and those other neighboring states to kind of join as well and see what we're all about and learn a little bit about winter. So, real quickly, our main activities we uh evaluate winter maintenance materials, equipment, and methods. Uh, we also develop specifications and recommendations, study and promote innovation techniques and technologies, and then we also support the technology transfer by uh developing practical field guides and curricula to promote the results of the research projects. So if you're interested and kind of want to know a little bit more about uh clear roads, which most of you uh everybody um that's gonna be watching this is pretty aware of Clear Roads, but if you go to the following uh Clear Roads website, clearroads.org, here you can find pretty much everything you want to know about Clear Roads. Um, how often we meet, who's all who your current state member representative is, and then also uh different training, uh QA, news, uh meeting minutes stuff that we've talked about in past uh past meetings. And then just kind of some showcase uh showcases that we've done for uh past projects kind of get displayed on this website. So some of the new projects that's going on this year, with this being part of the uh the end of the current pool fund and moving into the newer one, we kind of limited it down to where we had kind of smaller research projects, kind of less than a year uh time frame, and then a couple synthesis just so we can transfer over, get everything rolled out to the new pool fund. So, here one of the projects um that was that was brought in by Patty Caswell of Oregon was identifying appropriate friction test methods for the qualified product list. So, right now, the way our um the QPL is run with the uh we do a friction testing. Well, the company that used to do the fictional the fiction testing uh on the chemicals is no longer doing it. So this project is basically looking for other um agencies or labs that would be willing to find a way to do the friction testing of these chemicals or to see if if uh friction is a category that we need to be doing evaluating uh for these chemicals. So that's kind of where this project goes in. But also, if you go back to the website and actually pull up the uh the project, um it'll go it'll have the scope of work and kind of go more into detail on that. So next one is in-depth cost analysis of liquid and solid solid de-icing materials. This was brought on by uh Minnesota, and this one's just gonna talk about more of the uh understanding the individual cost of what's going into the liquid and solid deicing chemicals, whether it's your inhibitors, um, your salt brine, water costs, uh, all that stuff that's gonna go into this one. Um, a lot of it is kind of bringing back old old research and kind of revamping it to newer standards and uh and uh specifications. And then another good one here is uh by Wisconsin, uh transitioning that our annual survey of state winter maintenance data to a web-based tool. This is pretty much just making our what we current our uh our current program, which is just an Excel-based document and putting it as a web-based tool to where it's a lot easier to update the information and then also easier for any research or academia um that's wanting data, that's easier for them to export the data from the states and stuff like that. And so that's this is just a project that will help uh bring that up into newer standards and uh allow us to use more up-to-date GIS products um like Ezri and Power BI and and uh help uh build out some uh dashboards instead of having to use the macros and all that stuff in in Excel. So that's a pretty good project, and looking forward to working with EML Juni on that one. Um then we can roll right into uh uh synthesis um by Randy Feltner down in Kentucky. Uh salt contract language is uh best practice. So this one is just kind of brought up to the group where a lot of these states that don't usually order salt or have problems ordering salt, they just they just want a generic language on what to put all in the in the bid document. So that's what this synthesis is, is just to reach out to fellow uh neighbor and uh clear road states and county townships are and find out what what is all needed in the for a bid document for uh for salt. So this that's gonna be a pretty good one, and that will also help out with uh like the smaller local government agencies that maybe need to order salt that'll that'll help them out for for purchasing that. Um another synthesis here. Um this is one that I'm working with James uh Morin up in Washington. Um this is a project that a lot of the bridge engineers have been looking through for years, but this is looking at uh what strategies to reduce chloride impacts on bridges. Um so this so this one is going to be looking at okay, what is out there, what non-chlorides are out there that we can use that's gonna help uh reduce the uh delamination or the wear and tear of our bridge decks. So I again I know this is a big uh NHI problem that's out there right now. A lot of people are looking at to see what we can do differently, whether we go to stainless steel, uh rebar, galvanize is our triple coat or double-coated epoxy. Um, so this is just going to be kind of looking into a lot of that, just seeing what's out there. But again, I believe once we're kind of done with here, we'll we'll um I think our plan is to kind of work with NHI to maybe see what they've been doing uh on their end to see what uh to help assist with that. Another synthesis is looking at uh uh salt brine blend ratios. So since and this one is uh was brought up out of Ohio, and this one is just kind of looking into those additives that we add in the salt uh the salt brine, um whether it be the agricultural products or the byproducts of uh distiller grains or something like that. And then what what ratio should we be mixing those at? And which ones are gonna be melting the ice or or lowering the eutectic temperature the greatest, and at what rates is it? Going to be an 80-20, a 70-30, a 50-50. Um, but that's where this this uh synthesis project is gonna kind of look into. And then also uh look into the what rates you should be applying it. Another really good one. Uh this one's by Mike Madison, our uh vice chair of clear roads out of Nebraska, using AI and winter, winter highway maintenance. Um, I haven't got a chance to really look at into this one, but uh I know AI is a really big topic across the U.S. and all uh all band agencies, uh whether it's DOT, construction, it's a lot out there. So it's gonna be interesting to see what how we can utilize AI uh within the winter highway uh maintenance, winter maintenance.

Rick 11:55

I think that's gonna be a great project. You know, there's there's just so many different ways that you can apply AI from a you know technical to an administrative um manner, that trying to get a leg up to sort through that, I think is gonna that's gonna be a great project.

SPEAKER_00 12:13

Yeah, it is. And the thing is though, you gotta just take it with a grain of salt though, because there's still gonna be a you're still gonna have to have the human factor in there just for quality control and just verify that uh okay, if we're using uh dash cams to interpret road conditions, you're gonna have to physically verify with the human eyes, okay, is this what we're was it what we're seeing? Is it actually what we're seeing? So because I know a lot of times that what we see here, at least here in the Midwest, a lot of our dash cams or even our road cameras will filter through a lot of the snow. So it may not look bad on camera, but to the human eye, it's a it's a ground blizzard, and you can't be lucky to even see the uh the hood of the truck. So, some here's some ongoing clear roads initiatives. Again, this kind of goes back to our annual survey. Um, we're we're continuing that out where we're just sending it out using uh importing last year's data usage. Here in the Midwest, we didn't get much snow, so our numbers are gonna be extremely low. How our state does it is whatever we don't spend, the construction guys take it so and they use it on that. So we we have a huge project coming up on the Missouri River where we have our longest bridge, which is just a little over a mile and a half long over the Missouri River. It's called the Platte Winter Bridge, and I believe that one we're looking at about 275 to 280 million for that bridge. So it's a realignment and everything. So looking forward to that one finally get to get let and get going on it. It's it it needs it. But uh, but yeah, they took a lot of my money since we haven't had much of a winner. And then of course we have our uh the QPL. Um this is uh Patty up in Oregon. This is her baby, her uh so she's she runs this with a fine-tooth comb. So a good shout out to uh Patty and her team uh running this. But uh for those that aren't aware of the qualified product list, um it's a list of chemicals that have been approved by Clear Roads Um that have passed all of our specifications that we need to meet environment environmentally friendly needs, um meet the eucaly temperatures that we're looking for, um the corrosion uh proper corrosion and pH, all that stuff. So um it's a rigor of test uh testing protocols that uh we put uh the additives and everything through to uh to use on our roadways. Then here's another one that's actually part that's kind of tied into the QPL. Um this is uh headed up by Jasmine in Nebraska. Um she's the program manager at the laboratory in Nebraska. And this is a project where she's working with uh Ashto to get certified labs to kind of join in, and it's it's more of a making sure all the labs are within a certain specific tolerance uh on their samples, and then if some of them are out of um out of tolerance, they can kind of find out okay, is is it the actual chemical or is it a lab that may have uh bad uh tooling or something like that? It's a program that she's that she's working on. It's as it's pretty in-depth. But if you get take a look at the website and go in there, uh you can kind of learn more in detail on that on that uh project. Um, here are some of the the research and synthesis projects that's currently in work. Updating the impact of capital projects, decision support tool, um, toxicity standards uh for the qualified product list, effective pretreatment methods uh for events beginning as rain. Um, this is definitely going to be useful and beneficial for the southeast part of the U.S. where they get a lot of that freezing rain that we've been seeing in the last few years and how to deal with that. Um, and then also roll right into salt management training for non-DOT end users. So that's more like local government, cities, townships, etc. Then we have predictive methods to update the road report. So this one is kind of going into possibly using uh AI as uh for quality control uh checks on what uh what they're seeing out there uh at a ground level as well as uh from a desk. And then then we have snow and ice 2030. This is one that's kind of just looking at some of the older stuff and then updating it to where a lot of our younger generation that's just starting out here the next few years on just updating all that stuff to bring it up to uh to keep it going. Because a lot of the stuff that we've the research we've done back in the back in the day are still good to today and and here in the future. So this is just kind of just to kind of show showcase what's going to be out there, what could be changing, and uh what could need to be up or what could be updated. Then we also have the update AVL GPS for winter operations. So it's we're starting to see a lot more AVL vendors out there, just seeing if uh if a lot more kind of seeing what they have out there to offer, whether they are still single communication or dual communication AVLs, and that as well as are they able to tie in with all the uh the spreader controllers, and then also update or and also push out the uh the data that is needed. And then another one is best practices for research research implementation. This is this is just a synthesis on talking about okay, how how are the states or agencies applying that or implementing the current res uh research done by Clear Roads? That's something that's has been brought up by many states. Is a lot of us will ask them like, okay, yeah, we have this project done now. How are you using it? Are you or who's all implementing it into their state and and how? That way, if other states are interested, they can just either they have a point of contact to reach out to another state to help them out if they're wanting wanting to do something similar. So, as you can tell, we have a lot of stuff kind of in progress, research and synthesis and ongoing. Uh, here's another good one developing a national road condition standard. This one I am working on along with F uh FHWA Jeremy uh McGuffey, we're working on this one. Uh so what we're looking for on this on this project is trying to get a standardization among states on color coding of roads. So that way, say if somebody's coming from Illinois over to Iowa to South Dakota, and if you look at a lot of their 511s or their weather conditions, they'll have something like scattered, slippery, uh fog, and all this, all this other stuff, and then you roll in 10 miles down the road where you're in another district, and then you got something else, and then you roll here. So this is just to kind of standardize that to where when folks are coming through, it's either we're looking at just a sim uh a simple color code of like red bad, yellow is travel cautiously, and then green dry or or good good condition. So something kind of like that, but uh but a little more in-depth. Um, so that's gonna be that's gonna be a fun one once we start getting that one going. And then another one is just the uh the cost analysis of implementing and operating the AVLs within your within your agency. Um, this will definitely help out any states that are looking into getting into AVL or up uh upgrading their AVL to a uh latest and greatest. So this will kind of help them out uh to see what's out there for uh and then is how it's benefiting them. And then updated techniques and clearing different interchange configurations and geometric layouts. Um, this is another one brought up for those of us engineers that are that's been in uh the design. Well, we're starting to see a lot more uh DDIs across the US. So that is uh that is a a beast on its own, and then you start throwing in roundabouts, and depending on how that roundabout is uh designed, um, you're gonna be plowing it completely different.

Rick 20:37

You know, with with those diverging diamond interchanges, it that gets really squirrely because you want to plow to the left part of it, and you want to plow to the right on part of it, and you might have some equipment limitations that you're faced with, depending on what you got to work with and where you are.

SPEAKER_00 20:54

Yeah, and we found that out too. So we are we're working uh here in South Dakota, we're working on our fifth uh diverging diamond uh interchange, and we've had to redo, uh put in our equipment budget, um single uh single axle plows, a smaller, a smaller uh vehicle because our tandem plows are just too big. And with the lane lanes being a lot narrower and with no median or anything to put that snow, you gotta you gotta have a smaller, smaller vehicle to get through that. And then it's and it's completely different uh kind of going through there, especially when you have traffic. So that's where this is kind of gonna go in there, talk about okay, how what equipment would be needed, um uh what change uh uh what are your limitations. Uh some of it we're gonna talk about is um is paint uh striping, uh especially in the wintertime when that when those stripes are cut uh are covered up and you're and you have three lanes of traffic, or depending on how big your uh diverging diamond is, it can be very confusing, and when you get that little cross, you that's where we that's where we have. lot of a lot of crashes. So so yeah just kind of looking to see what we can do there uh the help with that as well and then of course I did I think I mentioned uh the uh the roundabouts so that's that's a big one too is now you're plowing one direction trying to clear that out and hopefully you have the the uh the space to put that material if not you're gonna be windrowing it and putting it in a truck and hauling it off then another one project is is looking at materials and guidance to maximize the value of a weather service contract so that one basically looking at information or uh literature on what they need to do uh to put out the bid for uh contracting with a weather service whether it's with a meteorologist or if you're just doing just your standard weather forecasting it's just kind of coming up with a language or a document on what you need to do to to get that set up. Another good one is snowplow truck washing facility designs and RFP templates this is getting to be a big one where trucks are the truck costs are getting extremely high high price so a lot of people are starting to look in the truck washing either whether in-house or outside or outside and seeing what uh designs are out there based on if okay are you using reclaimed water or are you using fresh water so this is going to be talking about or discussing the different types of units that you can purchase different manufacturers and so forth whether it's a high pressure low pressure high volume type systems and then another project that we're getting ready to start or we're working on the scope of right now is the comprehensive guide to pre-wet. This is more or less updating what stuff has been done from the bounce and scatter years of years ago that everyone kind of uses this is just kind of going up to renewing everything to today's standards and uh with all the new uh products that are out there so and see how it affects and then also looking at um how's it going to affect uh if you're using a toll plow because toll plows you can usually uh plow a lot at faster speeds and stuff like that so it's kind of gonna be kind of looking into that as well to my to help manage that a few others on here pH weave uh waivers for de icing products um to help some of those smaller companies that are just starting out to kind of help them get uh get onto the QPL to kind of get them up and going one of the recently completed projects that uh we just did was um 20107 determining the migration of chloride base deicers through different soil types this one was done by Aidan Neely uh up in uh Connecticut and this one kind of talked about how it kind of migrates into the soils through uh each winter and just and kind of looking to see it at the grass growth and stuff like that and we both we were kind of pretty shocked on that there doesn't really affect the soils that much as much as we thought so that's actually a pretty good research project but if you want to see more about the final you can either click on or you can check out the hyperlink here or just go to the Clear Roads page um and uh pull up that and you can read more of the the the final document and then another cup uh project that we just finished up on is the development of a public service announcement library um this is one that um I was working on this was just to kind of help out those states that are just getting in that are just bringing on like communication teams to help out getting one pagers out to the general public. If they're um also to help the TMCs if they need to put generic messages winter messaging on their dynamic message boards color boards or something like that we come up with generic winter uh messaging to help them out based off the different styles of boards whether they're colored or just amber matrix boards and then we also did some 30 second little video clips that can be uh uh modified to accommodate the states uh with a little bit of music and stuff like that so it's just to kind of help correlate with the general public and the dot just saying that hey it's we have to share the roads so help us out and it just kind of talks about the the messaging uh on that how we can help each other out another project that just finished up was uh vegetation management practices near roads to leverage the benefits of solar radiation there just check out the project there um I wasn't part of that so that one I don't know much much on but so but if you're interested just uh take a look at that one uh another project that we just finished up was quantifying the economic value with snow and ice operations uh success this one I don't know too much on as well either just uh take a look at the site and uh kind of read up on that uh another project was evaluation of direct liquids versus uh granular um this is getting to be a big concern for a lot of places with uh especially with populations growing so we're kind of looking at with the direct uh liquid applications we're finding that it's it's keeping the roads wetter and drying out a lot quicker versus the old pre-wetted granular method so this project kind of goes more into into that one talking about how if you have a high ADT area with lots of traffic that the DLA a direct liquid applications may be the better option versus doing the uh the granular with pre-wet and then another project is the uh the grip sensor technology and applications and salt applications this is mainly talking about the new uh sensors that are out there and how they can check the grip and and then how they can affect the uh the salt usage and then lastly the synthesis management of video recordings and images taken from truck mounted cameras um this is another big one uh that can be uh a legal concern with privacy and just depending on uh what the video catches on some of that stuff so you got to be real cautious on that and that's and this project is just kind of talking about that is how we manage manage that information and how our our relationship with our legal counsel as well as the local law enforcement how we how we tie all that stuff together uh when we do have a a request open request for a either that's something that it caught um one of the other things that's really big um here recently with uh the Clear Roads website is the winter driving safety this here uh this project here just kind of lets it's just a big document uh on our website that has uh uh multiple pages talking about what you need if you're caught in a blizzard like survival stuff make sure your vehicle's full of gas you have blankets um kitty litter or sand in case you get stuck you have some kind of grip to put in there it just kind of talks about a little bit of uh uh everything um from me can even on the mechanical side where if we need to or you want to make sure that your battery's charged it's kind of just kind of the your common common knowledge type stuff for uh if you're going on any road trips or anything like that. So dressing accordingly and then also what to do if if you hit black ice do you run into gun it or do you slow down turn the wheel or hit the brake slam on the brakes so what not to do type stuff is also talked about. One of the other things that we've have recently done is uh a lot of training everything that we have listed here is what um outside agencies whether it be um um general contractors uh schools that reach out to clear roads and downloaded material off our website um when they do that it sends an email to our consultants and then they approve um allowing them to download the the products so looking at the slide we've we've released 22 training modules covering all aspects of winter maintenance the modules contain comprehensive PowerPoints instructor guides student evaluations etc and then customizable and then as of June of this year 446 requests globally for access to clear roads training resources so that's that's quite a few agencies reaching out to download a lot of the stuff that we have created just in the the training another big one that uh that's really been beneficial that uh we created was the uh entry level driver training this is one that with the new federal changes that uh came into effect last year or a few years ago this allowed the states to either contract it out or work with uh general contractors to create a training program and then get their certifiers and and everybody uh spun up for the for the new uh cdl requirements we did receive a lot of downloads on this wanting to to utilize it because uh we had already had it done and the states didn't have to spend all the extra money to get the research or the the time to get it all built up so again um like I mentioned earlier here's our website that you can go to www.clearroads.org this will have everything that I just discussed and more and just play around on there um and uh see what you can find and if you do have any questions or comments feel free to uh reach out to myself Greg Wadley at CTC or uh Adam Wellner at uh min dot but other than that uh that's what we have going for Clear Roads um we do have our fall meeting coming up in uh Missic Connecticut here in September so looking forward to that and uh and uh during our fall months is when we review the RFPs the projects that uh were let out so all right no shortage of work being done over at Clear Roads no it's uh we try to stay busy and like I said with the new uh pool fund starting up the new new number we'll be able to start out and doing a lot more research so like I said this fall we have a lot of projects that we want to push out that's that's gonna be really fun all right outstanding Danny well thanks so much for stopping by and giving us a briefing on what's happening at Clearroads.

Rick 32:21

Yeah thanks Rick I really appreciate it thanks for listening in on this year's national briefing you can catch them all and other talk in winter ops episodes on our website talkinwinterops.com at the Ashto Winter Weather Management website at transportation.org forward slash winter dash weather dash management or wherever you get your podcast content. Video versions of this briefing are available on our Talk in WinterOps YouTube channel. Now if something in this briefing sparked your interest you can email me or our guests to keep the conversation going. Until next time thanks for tuning in and stay safe out there