The city of Cold Lake is letting the public know about some of the details surrounding a test project for keeping the roads a little safer in the winter. This winter saw the testing of a new road brine on the streets to see if it will be any better than the Road Guard Plus 8 solvent city crews are using right now.
George Urlacher is Transportation Services Manager with the city, he says there’s both some positives and some negatives to the project, which was only used on couple of streets.
“It didn’t go as good as we expected. The material works great, we just didn’t have the proper equipment to place it down. Where we got it down, in advance to the snowfalls, it worked great. It didn’t melt the snow to our expectations, but it prevented the snow from freezing to the roads.”
As for comparing the results to the way the city is handling the battle now, Urlacher says saving time is a huge plus for using the brine system.
“The response time is much quicker. If we get this down before the snow falls, it saves our trucks from continuously going back to the intersections.”
Urlacher says it’ll be a few more weeks before the City knows if it’ll be the new way to keep the streets safe from snow and ice in the winter.