Cleveland’s interactive snowplow map is FINALLY up and running, just in time

CLEVELAND, Ohio (WOIO) -Just days after Mayor Justin Bibb took office in January of 2022, the city of Cleveland was hit with a pretty significant snow storm that took days and days to clean up.

Bibb was clearly not happy with the city’s response and without throwing former Mayor Frank Jackson under the bus, Bibb vowed to fix a broken system he inherited.

By winter of 2022, one piece of the new snow tool kit was getting GPS systems in all of the city’s plows, some of which were still using paper maps for removal routes.

For the first storm it appeared the system with its interactive map was up and ready to go, but after a day it was shut back down.

Cleveland is on the eve of its first considerable snow tonight, and Cleveland 19 has been told the system is officially up, running and ready.

There is a new link for the map , which if you click on currently you will see a few trucks that have taken practice runs.

According to a spokesperson with the city, the snow plow map is only active during storms and will only record movement when the blade is down on a truck.

A truck that is salting and not plowing, will not show up on the map.

Here are a few other factors to keep in mind according to the city:

The snowplow tracker is only active during snow events and reports information on a 15-minute delay. This is by design.

Snowplow activity on the map shows plows that are actively plowing (plow down). A plow may not show on the map if it is salting but the plow is up or driving to its route. This is by design to reflect what parts of the city are actually plowed.

If the plow arm is down while they are salting, the plow may show up on the public map. Sometimes the drivers do this for safety / to increase their visibility out of the windshield.

Data is transmitted to the Plow map via the Samsara sensors installed on trucks. All trucks on the road right now have the Samsara gateway installed.

The snowplow tracker is not predictive meaning this is designed to help residents plan a trip, get updates about snow accumulations, or reflect the city’s policy on plowing.

The colors in the map key represent how recently each street was plowed. Colors are selected to be accessible to all communities, including those who are color blind or visually impaired.