I missed the first major snow event, as the storm was hitting Thursday night, I was sitting on the runway at the SF airport waiting for them to plow it so we could takeoff to Vegas. Sunny and 70 most of the weekend.
Had to chuckle though, I noticed one of the payloader plows at the SF airport has double snowgates on the front end loader. Good enough I guess for the airport just not for the citizens of Sioux Falls.
I have heard mixed reviews today about snowgates. A loyal DaCola reader is in the testing area this year, and his parents were last year. he shot video, but I have not had a chance to upload it yet. He did tell me though that they worked wonderful in his neighborhood but did notice they didn’t bother dropping them in intersections and by curb sidewalks (which would be a great use for them).
Snowgate advocate, Stehly went out with a friend to do some ‘snowgate’ watching. As she followed the operators she noticed they went very slow (under 5 mph) and sometimes would actually stop mid driveway, and only get half of the inlet. She also experienced one operator claiming the gate broke (brand new) and he literally sat in his snowplow for an hour just waiting for someone to show up and fix it, then decided to take a break. LOL.
Stehly noticed several times that the drivers were not maintaning a consistant speed, and seemed like they were not properly trained to run the snowgate or just did not care. This is unfortunate, because if the gates are to be tested properly, they have to be operated properly. I have often suspected some ‘mild’ sabotage going on.
Stehly called the head of the snowgate department at Henke Manufacturing and asked him about how they were operating the snowgates, he said, “The drivers should be able to maintain a consistant speed while operating the gates (around 20 MPH).” In other words they shouldn’t be stopping and starting up.
There has also been talk that the street department wants to test snowgates another year. Enough already, the election has already been postponed 16 months. Let’s vote on them already.