12-2-25 Sloan with Seth Walsh

Do want to be in a mad.

Harry Harry Harry is I don't mean style also I mean Harry driving this morning. The Roadways seven hundred w W. Scott's Loan show first significant snowfall of the season two to four plus depending where you are early on this morning. The earl early hours are extremely difficult. I heard poor Chuck Ingram and traffic getting in about three and a half hours late this morning. Left at three o'clock, didn't get it until just after six sometime. And same for

Roads O doubts certainly did a great job.

The other question would be the counties, but also the city of Cincinnati last January. We know snow removal of the city was a complete train wreck, was a disaster. We had equipment breakdown, shortages, roads left untreated, communication problems this time, lots of changes with snowplows equipped with state of the art technology to track routes and a new real time snow applow tracker website that apparently is not working as it should on that And he's out on

Seth, welcome back. Where are you right now?

We've just exited the UC area checking out around you see health that was a hard spot last year when the big snowstorm came in. We could literally couldn't gage cancer patients to U see help. But it's looking great right now.

You're actually out there.

Someone's driving you around, Buddy's driving you around, just because you want a lay of the land. You want to see what's working and what's not. Give me on a scale of one to ten, how impressed are you with the snow removal this morning with the City of Cincinnati.

Yeah, I'm gonna go seven or eight.

This is prior already the priority streets have really they're looking really good from what I'm seeing right now, and I think that's an incredible testament to the hard work of GPS overnight, the strategy they put in place of last year and make sure we didn't have to mess up from last from the last year. And you know, frankly,

Yeah, and on that too.

Last year there were literally city managers said, hey, listen, there's going to be maybe it was some bridges and roads said that listen, there's some streets that aren't going to get plowed. It's just a matter of fact. Is that has that changed since this time last year?

That's my understanding.

Yes, you know, we found last year after the snow emergency that there were six hundred streets we didn't even know that we hadn't touched.

And so we have literally redrawn the maps.

We've put in place a new system that makes so much sense. You know, it's a GPS based system where you can actually real time track streets are being plowed, what streets have not been touched.

And then we're making sure we're hitting all of them.

And even though the Cloud Tracker is kind of hit or miss right now, that's mostly because they have too money people coming to watch it. It's working. It seems to be working really well.

Yeah, on that, we're getting some calls. We had difficulty trying to log on and see in real time what roads have been plowed, and we had calls many a lot of people expressing frustration with that, and it's a bandwidth issue. I understand that, but is heavily this was that with all the problems last years, heavily this this solution was advertised. Shouldn't shouldn't that have been an issue that was foreseen that a lot of people are getting get on to see what the roads look like.

I would say that the issue that we did not foresee was how successful our marketing campaign would be at getting people to.

Trust this and use it.

Because we definitely expected a lot of usage, we did not expect nearly as much as we're getting today. And I think that's I think that's fantastic, and we're going to get it fixed for the next time.

That's why you stress test these experiences.

And we're found out that it's you know, it is working hit or miss. I've had the same problems that you're talking about there, but the miss is the problem, and so we're going to we're going to increase that bandwidth. We're going to make it better for the next time. Unfortunately that is the problem. But frankly, I'd rather take

Yeah, but I guess you'll push it back if if you stress test something, it shows you it's working. Apparently the stress test wasn't stressful enough.

Well, I mean, yesterday I was watching it. It was really it was actually really fun to watch. As we were showing what streets were getting pre treated. We were getting a lot of comments from people that they've never seen so many so many poles out there pre treating roads. But then today the snow hits a lot more people watched it. So what we expected to stress us to have in terms of how many people would watch it, we've we've passed. Then today finds out that a lot

Better at it. We're going to do better at it.

But the problem is too many people ultimately are watching it, and that we didn't anticipate.

And I think we will fix that. And that's an easy.

Problem to fix, as opposed to again last year, where we literally just didn't pole.

Six hundred streets. That's a big problem. This is a little Okay, let's fix that internal it problem.

Yeah, I'm not going to be labor the snow tracker app or the website anyway being down from time to time and getting you know, slow to load and things because so many people are watching it. I don't think that's a pot It's a step in the right direction of the sense that you know, last year it was six hundred roads if you're simply were left untreated and not enough equipment, not enough manpower, not enough everything, and

Yeah.

Absolutely, And to your point about communication. I mean here, in forty five minutes, the director of DPS is going to be coming to city Council to talk about, you know, all the work we've done the last year anyway, So we're actually we're getting what. We're not waiting a month to have a conversation about what the reaction is. We're actually going to get real time. Here's what happened, here's how it's put out, Here's where we need to do better.

Snow emergency in many, many years.

And so yeah, there's a little some little things that are fonts in the cracks, but on the whole, it's looking good.

And I think the fact that we're open to the feedback and criticism is really critical as well, because for.

Too long, you know, the answer was just well, when you're not every sheet can get plotted, and that's just not an acceptable answer.

And this year we're not accepting that as an answer. And I'm happy about that as well.

You should be.

I mean that this was the feather in your cap to get this done. There is going to be some rough patches as you roll this thing out. I think most people understand it and appreciate it, but it's moving in the right direction. And the last year, council Member Seth Walsh, what was happening behind the scenes relative to personnel changes, disciplinary actions, the failures addressed last year? What what you to the last three hundred plus days.

Well, since the snow emergency, I mean you saw some of the reporting that came out right afterwards, you know, immediately we were trying to figure out what was happening, Why did we have such a terrible reaction to the snow emergency?

And lifted up the hood and we I mean we found a multitude of problems, and so they moved Assistant city.

Manager Kathy Bailey over DPS and she really dug in on figuring out what happened, what support needed to be better put in place, what systems need to be fixed. They found over forty four different areas and let me stress areas not like issues.

So each area had its own issues that needed.

To get fixed within it that they spent the last three hundred plus days fixing.

The DPS director at the time retired.

We brought in Mark Riley, who has been fantastic, I mean he was texting me this morning, giving me real time updates of what was going on on the streets, really making sure that we had this figured out. You know, they found out within the first couple of days of the emerge to see that we didn't touch six hundred streets, and they've spent the last year really going through that and redesigning all these snow routes. They've brought in all this new technology, but also they haven't.

We haven't solved all four to four.

Of these issues yet because those are some massive issues that we're solving. So we've solved the immediate problems and then like today, we find you know, we got sixty percent of the way there on the snowplow tracker. We didn't expect as many people to be watching it as possible, so we got to do better and we're going to fix that for the next time. And there's other issues we're going to continue to work on. But the real big stuff is, you know, we have a plan to

You guys want to handle this, and then we're taking their businesses. We don't need to reinvent the wheel, and I think you see that today.

Yeah, yeah, you look at the areas that get a lot of snow and go, Okay, we don't need to replicate that, but we need to learn best practices to handle things here in Cincinnati. Seth makes a lot of It makes a lot of sense. Did you add more plod drivers this year?

Yeah? So we actually, you know, it sounds crazy, but we actually created a system where everybody is now that would drive a plow is actually trained to drive a plow instead of last time where we were literally putting people behind the wheel for the first time ever. I've actually just seen two snowplows in the last like thirty seconds, which is a great sign here.

So you know, last time part of the problem.

If you if you can imagine, we were literally putting people behind the wheel for the first time, giving them a binder with map quest like directions to say, hey, here's where you got to drive. They were driving in the middle of a blizzard at night, with like flashlights in their mouths to figure out where they had to go. I mean, that's just chaotic and that's a mess, and that's the reason we saw the disaster we saw. Now these everybody who's driving a snowplow today that you see

Get trained on how to do it. And they're out there and they're doing a great job.

And I think that day is going to continue to show over the months and years ahead, have some really positive returns for the city.

Yeah, and it's investing in that critical infrastructure. You know, you can talk about all those bells and whistles and nice stuff, but if the roads aren't plowed and the roads aren't full of potholes, that's another issue that was addressed to in the last year, then you're gonna have very unhappy residents. So it's good to hear that this has now become a big priority with you and the rest of council.

Seth.

I think a tip of the hat. If the roads are is good and you're you're driving around right now, well, somebody's driving you around, so I'm gonna make it like you're on the phone. By the way, I would if I were that person, I'd be demanding you buy them breakfast if you haven't already.

And also the.

Other thing too is breakfast.

It is the most important meal of the day. Also, that the twelve hour ships are new, is that correct? Say that again, the twelve hour ships? Yeah, I think was it twenty four hour coverage? And you know there was a huge burnout issue because I remember, you know, news would be talking to people who are driving a truck for twenty four straight hours being snowblind. And now you've kind of even changed the way that the ships are scheduled, right, Yeah.

I mean, so we got we put them on twelve hour shifts. There's a select crew that's on twelve hour shifts when the weather starts to change. But in emergencies like this, we put people on the twelve hour shifts. And you know, emergency I think is a very loose word for what we're dealing with today.

But yeah, they're on twelve hour shifts.

They're hard work, and they were out all night again yesterday they were pre treating watching that on the snowploud tracker cool, and I think that's really important that you can see your roads got appreciated and then today you can see hopefully you know, as the day progressage of they'll see your roads goot plowed and them they're they're hard workers.

And none of this problem has ever been the drivers. The problem has been the system we set up has failed them.

And I think for the first time they're they're set up for success and we're seeing that.

We know Seth Walsh that the tracker only activates during full winter response operations. What you call that like for example the snow just remindfully, what's the threshold for that?

Who makes the call?

And we didn't have one during the dusting is I think we had a conversation about that as well. We'll change eventually to where any snow event where the roads are treated will least snow where they're doing their job.

Oh well, I don't want to talk too far out of school on this one, but I think that that was a little bit of some bureaucratic speak when we gave that answer.

I think this is again part of how we were learning and growing.

So last time when we had the dusting the reason that the snowplow tractor wasn't working is there weren't snowplows out there. And shortly before you and I had our last call about this, one of the things I challenged them on was, hey, we're pre treating streets like show people. We're pre treating streets so you don't have to have a snowplow out there. And you see this time again, you can track the pre treating in your streets on there. They reacted quickly, they made the adaptions.

They move forward.

So I think the appropriate answer how you track snowplows is if there's a snowplow snowpower out there, you should be able to track it. And if that is pre treating your street, if that is power your street, we want to.

Be able to track the snowpower.

If you can't track it outside of the situation like today where there's too many people watching it, you can't track it, it's because there's no snowplow out there. And then you can ask us why is it not snowplowt there. We'll probably say it's because it's a sunny day and there's not no reason for one.

That's the hope at least.

Yeah, well right exactly.

I mean, if there's a threat, as we know, you know Cincinnati's, we freak out the minute there's even the forecast of snow. We start driving with our hazards on. We pump our brakes. Some people drive sixty miles over the speed limits and people thirty miles under the speed limit. It's chaos out there before the first flake even flies. I think having that system in place, when that's part of it's like, hey, l roads are treated. There's a little bit of comfort there knowing that you guys are on.

I agree, and I think it's going to be critical as schools have to make decisions about whether they're gonn to be open or closed.

You know, they have to build trust the city.

Is going to be able to do their job and get the streets plowed, and the part of city.

Government is rebuilding that trust.

What happened last year was big in the sense of is ten inches, but it's been an issue that's been building a building building for years and so hopefully this allows not only have streets clear, but to be able to get schools open appropriately. Build trust that we were ready for, and it just kind of ripples out from there so that you know, jobs.

Aren't interrupted and people can continue their lives even though snow's coming down.

They get enjoy the beauty of watching the snow as opposed to worry about driving in it.

Yeah.

The other element of this too, you kind of touched down a little bit, is the prioritization of streets. Obviously, the arteries, the ones that get you to the hospitals for example, campuses, things like that, those have to be cleared for emergency runs and the like. Side streets get deprioritized. But what is a reasonable wait for people listening this morning seth wallsh relative to their street being cloud.

Yeah.

I think the biggest way I'd say it is, you know, right off the bat, we've got to clear the arteries, and to your point, you know, cancer not cancer hospitals are really important because people need to be able to get to and fro there from there.

From there, we.

Kind of spread out to you know, the streets that most people are traveling on. You probably know what they are because you're probably driving on them. And then once the snow really kind of stops, it allows us to start tackling and triage in the side streets, but immediately when the snow's coming down, we're trying to get those the main arteries, the main emergency roads, the main roads people are going to be driving on as clear as possible.

We just keep hitting them and then I'm gonna show's over.

We're gonna go out there, We're gonna hit the side streets and get those clear because that's a lot easier to just hit it once or twice and then it's completely solved.

Yeah, And I love the you know, the when the apps up and fully working should be for the next cycle here, then you're gonna be there's gonna be accountability. You can see that where the roads are, when they've been treated, when they've been plowed, where they've been salted and plowed. There's a whole bunch of metrics on the page. And that's a step in the right direction for sure.

I'm I'm very confident and I'm I'm optimistic that going forward it will not be a thing in Cincinnati where you say my street never gets plowed. If your street doesn't get plowed, it should be for other reasons like it's a private street, not because it's subsidious and Snati street and we just don't plow it. And I think that'd be a huge change that hopefully you don't even realize happened.

He says, well, well, she's in the thick of it right now, checking out the roads, make sure the plow crews are doing what they're doing, making sure of things working right. It sounds certainly well, not perfect, light years away from where we were well almost a year ago in January when that ten inch storm and literally six hundred streets not plowed. That is a unmitigated disaster. Far sight better today for sure, Buddy. Appreciate you checking in

There you go.

Hopefully your commutes okay, And looks like a lot of the roads got cleared in the last couple hours anyway for those straggling the work.

Maybe a little bit late this morning. That's good. That's good.

So yeah, not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but far sight better than it was. At least the needle is moving in the right direction, slowly with news. We'll get a full traffic and weather update seconds away here on seven hundred WLW