Outsmarting Mother Nature isn’t easy, but that doesn’t stop the Kansas Department of Transportation from trying.

When it comes to keeping the roads clear of snow and ice, KDOT leaders say they’re looking for any technological advantage they can get these days.

“It used to be that we really didn’t need much technology because we were just waiting for the storm to hit and would try to undo the damage that was done,” said Peter Carttar, a staff engineer with KDOT who oversees several of the department’s technology initiatives. “But now we’re trying to prevent problems rather than react to them. That requires the use of a lot more complex technology.”

For example, KDOT is part of a 10-state project that is testing a high-powered computer system. The system – called a Maintenance Decision Support System – does storm modeling to create a detailed battle plan for when snow-plow crews should hit the road, where they should go first and how much salt and sand they should spread.

The state is in the second year of the $150,000 program and is learning more about the benefits and drawbacks of the technology all the time.

“Last year, we were saying that it is difficult to determine if this program is really helping us or not because we didn’t have much of a winter,” said Ron Hall, district maintenance engineer in the Garden City area. “But in the last few weeks, we’ve been giving it a lot more work.”

Mixed results

Thus far, the results have been a lot like the Kansas weather: up and down.

“We still think it is very promising technology, but I think everybody agrees that it is not quite ready for prime-time yet,” Carttar said. “The biggest part of it is that we’re asking it to do some pretty complicated things. It is very hard to put together a forecast for how much snow is going to blow in a certain area, but that’s the type of stuff we’re asking it to do.”

If the bugs ever get worked out, KDOT leaders believe motorists will benefit. The system is designed to create a maintenance plan that gets roads treated before the bulk of a storm hits, meaning that snow and ice won’t accumulate.

“The system tries to keep it so that the roads are just wet or a slushlike surface,” Hall said. “But with some of the storms we have been getting this winter, we don’t have enough horses to keep ahead of it.”

Traffic moves along Kansas highway 10 east of Lawrence on Saturday morning. The Kansas Department of Transportation is looking at high-tech means to keep winter roads clear.

The computer system is now being used in the Dodge City and Topeka areas, but the state has much of the technology in place to use it statewide once the process becomes more refined.

The system uses data from remote weather stations, along with forecasts from several weather services, to create its battle plan. The state has 53 of the weather stations, which cost about $25,000 apiece. The stations measure air and pavement temperatures, wind speed and direction, humidity, precipitation and other meteorological factors.

Science fiction

The weather stations primarily are used to provide data to KDOT’s 511 telephone system that allows motorists to call and receive information about road conditions.

But the weather stations also can be used to support some uses that sound like they’re straight from a science fiction novel. For example, a bridge on U.S. Highway 50/83 northeast of Garden City is connected to one of the weather stations. The weather station feeds data to a computer that can automatically trigger a series of spray nozzles embedded in the center line of the bridge. The nozzles can cover the bridge with a thin solution of liquid ice melt to stop snow and ice from forming on the bridge.

The bridge has been outfitted with the $60,000 sprayer system since 1995. Hall said the results haven’t exactly produced science-fictionlike results.

“We haven’t put in anymore like it,” Hall said of the system. “That probably says a lot. We’ve had quite a few maintenance problems with it.”

But Hall said the state hasn’t completely given up on the idea of high-tech bridges. He’s meeting with a vendor this week to discuss a lower-tech version of the system that would be activated via cell phone rather than being fully automatic. Hall’s hoping the $20,000 systems show promise because he thinks they could improve safety on several bridges in the state that have a reputation for icing up more quickly than crews can get to them.

“There are several places that we don’t have a lot of room for error,” Hall said. “This would give the crews another tool to stay ahead of it.”

Mike Floberg, who oversees the state’s intelligent transportation systems at KDOT, said there are plenty of other high-tech devices that the state can look at adding the future. They include:

¢ Variable speed limit signs. The electronic signs are hooked to a sensor that measure road and weather conditions. That means the speed limit sign could read 55 mph on a nice sunny day, but might drop down to 35 mph when the road is snowpacked.

¢ Mobile data terminals for snow plows. The computer devices hooked up to snow plows would send back real-time data to a central location so maintenance supervisors could make decisions about whether roads need to be replowed or whether more salt and sand should be spread.

¢ Wi-Fi rest stops. Floberg said the state has installed wireless Internet access at the rest stop area along I-70 near Paxico. Floberg said the Wi-Fi access is set up so that it automatically takes users to a state portal that shows road information.

Carttar said he thought the state would continue to explore new ways to use technology to keeps the roads clear of winter hazards, but he said KDOT leaders also were keeping the improvements in perspective.

“This all can definitely improve safety, but we also have to understand that Mother Nature is always going to be more powerful than we are.”