Amid season’s first snowfall, Anchorage stands up city website for tracking plow progress

With Anchorage’s first significant snowfall of the season, Mayor Suzanne LaFrance’s administration unveiled a new website on Tuesday for tracking the municipality’s plow-out progress.

The Anchorage Snow Plow Updates site, at muni.org/plow, is intended to be a one-stop shop for real-time information on which roads, sidewalks and neighborhoods have been cleared or not yet handled.

“We can’t control the weather, but we can control our preparedness and communication,” LaFrance wrote in a statement.

The new website essentially collects into one place information that was mostly already available in previous years, with a few additional tools. On a desktop or mobile device, people can see which sidewalks have been cleared, which neighborhoods are being plowed, report a blocked bus stop and, for elderly and disabled residents, request that a driveway berm be removed.

[Season’s first big snow fouls roads and shifts Anchorage schools into remote learning]

The site is not perfect and is being treated as a work in progress by its designers. The Snow Solutions Team headed by Municipal Manager Becky Windt Pearson worked with the city’s Innovation Team on pulling the new tool together in time for winter, which arrived slightly earlier than usual this year. But the administration rolled it out after this week’s snowfall, hoping that having the site available and soliciting feedback on bugs and potential improvements will refine it in the months ahead.

“If we can provide reliable and consistent communications, we give residents the information they need to be part of snow preparation and response,” Windt Pearson wrote in a statement.

The city plans on eventually having GPS devices and monitoring systems set up on its graders so that residents can track where the fleet is deployed. But that function will not be ready for several more weeks, likely in December.

One of LaFrance’s main campaign promises was to improve on the city’s response to winter weather after two exceptionally snowy years back to back during Mayor Dave Bronson’s tenure. The Bronson administration was criticized for its handling of the municipal labor force and plowing equipment, which contributed to delays in clearing residential streets after significant snowfalls.

Since coming into office this summer, top members of the new administration have coordinated with department heads and partner agencies on how to improve plowing. They’ve also taken steps like adding more money into the budget for heavy equipment repairs as well as purchasing new graders and other vehicles to bolster the municipal fleet.

At the bottom of the Anchorage Snow Plow Updates site’s main page is a link to submit feedback and ideas to help improve it.