The City of Guelph’s snowplow tracking website saw an uptick in views over the past few days as a substantial blizzard blanketed the city overnight on Sunday and into Monday morning.
According to data provided by the City of Guelph, between 11:00 a.m. on Monday and 11:00 a.m. on Tuesday the website received 19,612 views.
Usage peaked around 8:00 p.m. on Monday night when the website recorded over 1,200 visits.
Between January 10 and Jan 17 the website recorded 24,929 hits.
Using a geographic information system (GIS), the website tracks the location of the City of Guelph's street and sidewalk snowplows using real-time data.
Originally intended as an app, the city moved away from a specific downloadable app and towards a user-friendly website that allows access to all users with the click of a button.
“We changed the model on that, so what we felt was, and we’ve done this on most of the online mapping capabilities, we went away from apps because it did require people who maybe weren’t citizens in our community to install specific software,” said Alex Brossault, program manager of GIS and data information technology with the City of Guelph.
Among the snowplows tracked are recently named snowplows Blizzard of Oz, Flocon, Darth Blader, Sir Plows-A-Lot, Frost Bite and Lil’ Plow Wow.
“I think that it’s usually that the piece of mind that the plows are in fact out and about, and on our guelph.ca site there are all the details about when your street will be plowed if your a main street, secondary or tertiary street and how that process works,” said Brossault.
The website reduced the call load to City of Guelph personnel typically have experienced during blizzards as the real-time data allows for residents to know if a snowplow is in their region.
This map, which can be viewed here, was officially launched for winter 2017/2018 season and has since been providing residents with up-to-the-minute information on when they can expect to be plowed out.
