High-tech snowplows and data tools are increasingly finding their way into how U.S. cities clean up after big storms, as Syracuse and others lean on systems that let officials track where plows have gone and, in some cases, document road conditions. In Syracuse, officials said the changes have helped rebuild public trust after blizzards that once triggered complaints about street neglect even when plows had passed but work was hidden under fresh snow.
Conor Muldoon, the city’s chief innovation officer, said Syracuse’s complaint calls dropped by 30% after it revamped how it deploys snowplows and how it explains their progress to residents. Muldoon described residents looking at street conditions and concluding the city was not doing enough, and he said Syracuse can point to a public map to show when a plow was actually on the road.
Syracuse averages 126 inches of snow each winter, more than any other U.S. city with a population of at least 100,000, according to the report. Before the blizzard that pounded the Northeast last week, the city had already surpassed its typical average due to a record 2-foot (60-centimeter) accumulation on one day in late December.
To meet a goal of clearing every street within 24 hours after a storm, Syracuse partnered in 2021 with Samsara, a San Francisco-based company, to put live GPS tracking and dashcams on city fleet vehicles, including snowplows. Officials said the system integrates with GIS mapping software and allows city staff to monitor live video and plow locations in real time, though residents cannot access live feeds.
Instead of live streaming, Syracuse provides a public map that updates every 5 minutes showing which roads have been cleared. This week, the report also pointed to Samsara’s use of AI in its broader product lineup: the company said it began incorporating AI into its products in 2019, and this winter it provided customers with footage from other cameras in its network to help officials understand street conditions even when no worker is on scene.
The report included an example from Samsara’s Kiren Sekar, the company’s chief product officer, who described the challenge of dispatching the closest plow for a snow emergency in Plainwell, Michigan. Sekar said the system can identify the nearest vehicle rather than requiring officials to sift through a list, describing it as “We’ve got Trevor in vehicle 203, 15 minutes away.”
While Syracuse uses a combination of live GPS, mapping and dashcams connected to a public-facing map, New York City has taken a different approach in scale and design. The city’s tracking program, known as BladeRunner, monitors snow removal equipment—including garbage trucks with plows attached—through GPS data, but city officials said a human in a command center analyzes the information rather than AI.
Joshua Goodman, the deputy commissioner at the city’s Department of Sanitation, said the program’s route planning helps the city pursue “equity,” with plows running specific routes so main and side streets receive essentially the same treatment. Goodman said typically 99% of the city’s roads will be plowed within the first four hours after a moderate snowfall under ideal conditions, but he said it did not quite meet that mark during last week’s historic storm.
Beyond service tracking and route management, the report said cities and states also use the technology to control costs and insurance exposure related to winter maintenance. The report said U.S. cities and states spend upward of $4 billion each year on snow operations, and it described how improved visibility can help assure roads are not overplowed or oversalted, which officials say can cause environmental damage.
Fayetteville, Arkansas, launched a public-facing snow removal map for the first time this winter and reported improvements in plowing time, labor costs and fuel savings despite enduring about double the snow from a year ago. Ross Jackson Jr., the city’s fleet operations manager, said the system’s value comes from being able to see where officials need to go and whether the city has been there.
In New Jersey, the report said the township of Edison reduced its spending on salt and brine by 35% and reduced insurance payouts by 60%, attributing the changes to video evidence that helped show plow drivers were usually not at fault when collisions involved another motorist’s car. In Iowa, Craig Bargfrede, the state’s winter operations administrator, said video installed on snowplows helped demonstrate that all but one of 12 snowplow accidents in a single day were the other driver’s fault.
The report also described Michigan’s use of turn-by-turn navigation for snowplow dispatching. Rusty McClain, assistant general superintendent of the Kalamazoo County Road Commission, said the county was the first in Michigan to employ the approach and called it a “huge improvement in efficiency,” contrasting it with older methods that required officials to consult paper maps, call colleagues and confirm whether an area had been plowed.