Heavy snows turn the city of Durango into a winter wonderland with plenty of opportunities for winter sporting across the hilly landscape. But it is a full-time effort for Durango’s street crews to keep roads clear and daily life moving forward.
When the city receives between 4 and 6 inches of snow, street crews must travel about 1,100 miles – which includes multiple sweeps of each road – with a combined 120 hours of plow time. And that’s just over a 24-hour period, said Joey Medina, Durango Public Works operations manager.
That’s a lot of road to cover. And weather doesn’t wait for crews to lace up their best winter boots. To keep up, the city follows a plan of attack for plowing streets.
First priority for plowing are arterial roads such as Florida Road, Main Avenue, East Third Avenue, Goeglein Gulch, East Eighth Avenue and other high-traffic roads, Medina said. Likewise, ensuring road access to police and fire stations, La Plata County Sheriff’s Office, Mercy Hospital and county emergency management offices fall into the city’s top tier of priority snow removal.
School zones technically fall into the city’s second tier of priority, but often the streets division will try to combine them into top priority efforts, he said. Collector roads, which distribute traffic between arterial roads and residential streets, also take second priority for snow removal.
Residential streets and cul-de-sacs are second to last in line for snow removal efforts, preceding only alleyways, according to the city’s website. But driving lanes are ideally still plowed at least once per day unless snow accumulation is minor or snow is expected to melt within 24 hours.
In all, the arterial roads amount to about 51 lane miles of road for street crews to cover.
In previous years, the city struggled with short staffing for snowplow drivers. But this year is different. Medina said its streets division is fully staffed and it has a fleet of 14 plow trucks. At any given time during a snow event, the city aims to have between at least six and eight plows on the road.
Crew members work in two 12-hour shift rotations that take place at 2 a.m. and 2 p.m.
“We are getting guys rest in between shifts,” Medina said. “ … But we do depend on the severity of the storm. We will run 24 hours a day to make sure we’re keeping things open and clear.”
He said maintenance on the snowplow fleet is a daily affair. As crew members end their shift, they examine their plows, file reports and the plows are taken to the shop for repairs – ideally before the next shift – so they can get back onto the roads.
Sometimes, major repairs are needed, and so the city tries to always have backup plows available. Maintenance issues can range from a broken hydraulic hose to a cracked plow.
“It just really depends on how hard they’re running,” Medina said.
On average, whenever the streets crew is removing snow from the Durango Central Business District, about 500 truckloads of snow are hauled to a snow storage area near the Tech Center in west Durango.
Medina said a single dump truck load of snow can weigh as much as 10 to 12 tons, depending on the density of the snow collected. That’s 600 tons of snow being hauled out of the business district downtown during and after an average winter storm.
“Over the last couple of days, we’ve pulled probably 265 loads out of some of the central business district area,” he said. “We did pull roughly between 85 and 100 loads out of Jenkins Ranch over the last day or two.”
An email from Durango Business Improvement District Executive Director Tim Walsworth said snow removal efforts the night and morning of Jan. 9 and 10 resulted in 215 loads of snow being hauled out of downtown, with zero cars towed. But a second snow removal effort on Jan. 12 and 13 resulted in six cars parked on city streets being towed and another four being ticketed. One hundred sixty-five loads of snow were removed at that time.
The BID email says business employees and customers could use free parking at the Transit Center and three city parking lots on East Second Avenue between 5 p.m. and 7 a.m.
Medina declined to comment about how much snow removal efforts cost the city, citing the unpredictability of a given storm. But in 2019, the city said it cost $8,000 to $10,000 a night to remove 150 to 200 dump truck loads of snow from downtown Durango.
The city’s 2024 proposed budget says expenditures for personnel costs such as salaries, materials and supplies, and charges and other services totaled $599,653 last year.
Expected snow removal costs this year total $817,899.
Snow routes are another essential aspect of the city’s plan for handling significant winter weather, and the city plans to revisit the layout of its snow routes in the next year or so, Medina said.
Snow routes are somewhat intertwined with arterial roads, he said. They are intended to link residential areas to major roadways to help street crews and emergency management personnel get from point A to point B within the city.
“We want to make sure that the official routes that we have are the most efficient routes,” he said. “If there’s anything that we feel that needs to be updated or changed, you know, we want to make that change if we need to. So we’re always looking for ways to improve snow operations.”
He said the city will assess data collected about snow routes to determine what, if anything, needs to be adjusted or changed.
Medina said snowplow drivers work long hours to keep roads open and accessible for travel, and having them around is a “really big win” for the community.
“Kudos to those guys because you know, they’re doing their best to make sure things are staying open and keeping (roads at) that high level of service that we’re trying to provide to city residents and businesses,” he said.
On the county side of snow removal, La Plata County spokesman Ted Holteen said the county road and bridge department has a staff of 35 plow drivers and it is training three more drivers for additional positions.
Drivers sweep over 600 miles of county roads and drive more than 1,500 miles every winter storm, not including state highways such as U.S. highways 160 and 550 and Colorado highways 140, 172 and 151 or private and city roads, the county website says.
Snow removal efforts take place across four county districts, each with its own snow removal team. During the winter, teams are often working or on-call seven days a week, the county says.
“We are super thankful for those (positions), as that gives the guys a chance to take time off in the winter, which is rarely allowed in the winter,” Holteen said.
They are out plowing during every storm in shifts varying between three teams on eight-hour shifts or 10- or 12-hour shifts, depending on storm intensity. At least two people are out on each route at all times during a storm.
Plow routes range from 40 to 90 miles. Crews use a variety of plows, with typical snow plows, fast-speed plows (pickup trucks with plows) and grader vehicles, he said.
cburney@durangoherald.com
