Snow removal is year-round job for Iowa DOT

Bob Younie doesn't wait for the first snowflakes to fall before he starts thinking about snow removal.

“The odd thing is, some of us at the DOT think about winter all year round, how we work in that arena and how we can do better,” said Younie, the Iowa Department of Transportation state maintenance engineer since 2007. “Then we perform it when it needs to be performed.”

Snow and ice removal – keeping traffic moving through long Iowa winters – is both a personal and professional challenge for Younie and his colleagues in the Ames DOT headquarters.

“It's important to public mobility and important to public safety, and we take our jobs very seriously, how to do the best we can with what we have,” said Younie who has been with the DOT since 1971.

The commitment is no different from the 1,064 winter operations equipment operators, mechanics, highway technicians and associates, office assistants and their supervisors at 109 garages around the state, Younie said.

They do battle with winter armed with bigger and better equipment, more technology and new methods of applying salt and sand.

To a great degree, it's still man versus nature, Younie said, “but I think it's also more. I think we are applying more technology that makes us more efficient and makes us better stewards of our resources.”

For example, snowplow trucks are equipped with GPS devices that show their location and direction, whether their blades are up or down, whether they are applying material to the road surface and the air temperature around them.

That's very useful in the allocation of the DOT's 901 snowplow trucks and other resources, Younie explained.

It would be an unusual storm that all DOT 901 snowplow trucks would be mobilized at one time, he added.

“It's an unusual storm that we're using all of them at one time, but it can happen,” he said.

With the GPS devices, DOT supervisors have a much better idea of where equipment is and “helps the re-allocate resources in ways that make sense,” Younie explained.

Of course, the DOT gets plenty of unsolicited advice about how resources are allocated, too.

“I don't think any government official is left alone,” Younie said.

However, he thinks most people understand that roads that carry more traffic get more attention.

“I think that resonates with people, that we put resources where they affect safety,” he said. “That's something that I think we do a pretty good job of.”

No one, however, applies more pressure to DOT snow removal operations than the DOT itself, Younie said.

“We have high expectations for ourselves,” he said. “The snowplow operators take their jobs seriously.

"They know their friends and relatives are out there driving. They work hard to do their best.”

And they don't wait until the snow disappears to evaluate how they're doing.

“We talk about it coming into a storm – how we are going to attack it and treat it – as well as after,” Younie said.

The post-game analysis involves DOT staff, including uniformed officers, and the Iowa State Patrol as well as the National Guard and other agencies when appropriate.

“There's nothing that says we can't get better, so we're always looking for ways to do that,” Younie said.

Among the agency's goals is to be a good steward of the environment.

“We measure salt in pounds per mile,” Younie said. “Pounds, not tons. We want to be good stewards, but be effective.

"We straddle that line carefully,”

Toward that end, the DOT will keep leveraging technology and looking at options.

“Right now, salt is our best option, but we keep investigating what else is out there that is both cost effective and useful,” he said. “We keep our eyes open.”