Only kiddin' on the category, this is totally political...the union boys made pretend that they were working over the Holiday storms in NYC, and that there was no work slow down...well you mess with surveyors and they will figure out a solution... when the snowplow is not moving per the GPS print out do you think TENURE will help!!! I took my wife to the airport this AM, and the only road in good shape was my dirt road. They like to go through and dump massive amounts of salt around here, slush-a-saurus...the salt mine is only over the hill from where we live, and it is neat to watch it's pile shrink over the winter. However the steel in the bridges deteriation and the rust on cars is obvious. Milling and paving, the shovel ready BS won't fix that...wait I was talkin' about Bloomberg and GPS>>>what say you guys, think he wants to find out where a truck is stuck???
Well it could have many applications as we know.
It could be useful in an emergency.
It could be useful for the drivers
It could be useful for the maintenance folk.
and it would be very very useful for management.
someone's stock is going to rise a little.
Bloomberg knows.
😉
State snowplow contractors in MA have GPS units on their trucks to keep track of where they have been. A few years ago they busted a guy for putting two units on his truck claiming that they had two trucks plowing. Somebody figured out that two truck couldn't be that close, a kudos for submeter systems and probably WAAS too.
T.W.
Before Bloomberg they didn't even realize that a garbage truck could do double duty as a snowplow.
Unions are not always so tough to deal with. Around our way, unions said 3 guys were required in a plow truck. So they ripped out the bench seats and put in 2 seats and 2 seatbelts and advised them that anyone not wearing a seatbelt would be cited by the police. 1/3 less cost overnight, no issues.
Our sanitation crews in Lawton are not union but we now have the one person trucks and the 95 gallon carts. All automatic and very fast. We used GIS to change the routes to make them even more efficient. The packers used to get about 2 MPG but that is up to 5 MPG now since they don't idle as much waiting on workers to empty the cans.
No GPS on the packers and for the size of our town then I do not feel that it is necessary. It might help for new drivers but not so much for anything else. Each truck has their weights automatically totaled with our new scales at the land fill and supervisors can easily spot if something seems amiss.
We don't have a lot of snow equipment, for obvious reasons, but the work trucks can be converted to salt/sand spreaders in about five minutes. They usually start before the ice and snow and try to be very proactive. Anyone with the city can call in about slick spots to get a truck on the way.
Gunther, what the he11 are you talking about? Snow plows on garbage collection trucks is not a Bloomberg "innovation".
I grew up in Brooklyn, and from my first memory of a snowstorm, garbage trucks have had plows attached to them.
This was standard operating procedure in the fifties and sixties.
One of the supposed reasons for Mayor John Lindsay's troubles during the 1969 blizzard was animosity towards him by the sanitation workers union over budget cuts the year before.
The Sanitation Department always was (and still is) responsible for the local streets....the Highway Department/NYCDOT was(and is) responsible for the highways and main arteries.
