Evaluation of Performance of Automatic Vehicle Location and TowPlow for Winter Maintenance Operations in Wisconsin

Winter maintenance operations are a major expense for state departments of transportation located within the Snow Belt of North America. Winter maintenance-related expenses for 2005 through 2010 ranged from $46 million to $87 million per year for state highways in Wisconsin. During the past two winters, the Wisconsin Department of Transportation implemented TowPlow and automatic vehicle location (AVL) technologies to optimize winter maintenance operations. A TowPlow is a plow that is attached to a regular plow truck to increase the snow removal capacity. AVL is a combination of systems capable of monitoring the location of a vehicle, material application rates, and road conditions from a central location. In this paper, qualitative and quantitative evaluations are presented for these two technologies. Findings from both evaluations showed that the implementation of these technologies would result in potential cost savings resulting from lower salt usage (AVL) and more efficient operations (TowPlow). The use of a TowPlow to perform the same task as a regular plow truck resulted in 32% to 43% operational cost savings. Implementation challenges, maintenance issues, and reduction in salt usage by counties that implemented AVL were evaluated. Implementation of AVL resulted in about 6% savings in salt usage from increased plow operator compliance with guidelines. When only the savings in salt usage and none of the intangible benefits were considered, the benefit–cost ratio values ranged from 1.05 to 1.89 depending on the cost of salt and percentage of reduction in salt usage.