If you ever wondered when your street is going to get plowed, wonder no more.
Chatham-Kent has launched a new online snow plow tracker that gives you a reasonable idea of when your street will get plowed, lets you know which ones have been cleared of snow and what route to take during a snow storm to avoid them.
Miguel Pelletier, director of Public Works, says the information will provide drivers with the best possible choices for travel and is accurate to within 15 minutes.
"All of the vehicles that we use for winter operations, they have a GPS tracker and we'll use that to show where the snow plows have been and where the graders have been up to the last 24 hours," says Pelletier.
He adds that the tracker will not provide estimates as to when roads may be cleared due to the many variables involved. The municipality has 56 snowplows and 21 graders.
You can find the plow tracker by clicking here.
Pelletier says the tracker allows you to see where vehicles have been for the past 24 hours.
"It won't show you where they're going in case we have to change to route or something like that. So, we don't want to create an expectation that a plow will be there at an exact time but at least you'll know that the plows are in the area and you'll know where they've been recently," Pelletier says.
He says you can zoom, pan, and change to satellite view and use Google Street View to see them.
"I think the measured benefit is the public engagement to let them know what happened and let them plan their route. School buses and other people can use it, that's the main benefit, public engagement," says Pelletier.