While Madison College wasn’t in session from Jan. 8-12, many students may remember the heavy winter storms that dumped over a foot and a half of snow in about five days.
This news should be nothing new for longtime Wisconsin residents, but that assumed familiarity with winter conditions led to widespread transportation issues for many drivers. Those poor road conditions led to 120 vehicle crashes and left nearly 30 injured citizens in under two weeks, according to the City of Madison Streets Division and cited by The Cap Times.
It didn’t help seeing other local communities like Fitchburg, Monona and Waunakee snow-free while Madison residents were forced to deal with unplowed snow and packed ice on road surfaces.
So, it begs the question: How can we improve winter road conditions?
The City of Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway responded in a blog post to the numerous complaints and inquiries logged against the City and promised to handle the transportation issues better. Her response cited frigid temperatures below the threshold for effective salt application. That statement holds mostly true since temperatures fell below freezing, and road salt can only bring the freezing temperature of snow down to about 15-20 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the Wisconsin Transportation Information Center.
She also cited the difficulties in finding staff coverage for the more than 700-mile loops of salt routes within the city. The mayor said that city staff had already been working on 24-hour shifts to provide salt, sand, and plowing services for key infrastructure.
The City of Madison Streets Division has 32 trucks to cover a network of more than 700 miles of traffic lanes.
The next response was to dump loads of sand on the road to manage the road quality. The reason is that sand can help improve traction for vehicles and help the wheels better stick on the roads’ surface. However, judging from the vehicle crash reports, that had limited effect.
Does that mean that an early and aggressive road salt plan is our only savior from icy roads? Not necessarily.
Road salt also has some negative effects on both the quality of your personal vehicle and the local environment. According to USA Today, the damaging effects of road salt on rust formation, especially on the undercarriage of a vehicle.
In 2022, the Public Health Madison & Dane County published a Road Salt Report detailing the harmful effects of chloride, a major component of road salt, for both humans and the environment.
At higher concentration levels, chloride can be toxic to aquatic life, affecting the drinkability of our water supply and can increase the corrosiveness of water on our public infrastructure like bridges and roadways.
Overall, the city has decreased salt usage from 16,351 tons in 2013 to 6,124 tons in 2022. However, chloride conditions in our Yahara Watershed Lakes have been steadily increasing for decades.
A growing problem exists for road salt usage in the Madison area, but city officials must balance environmental concerns with the public safety of citizens navigating through Winter roads.
In the meantime, locals can do their part by driving slowly and steadily during icy conditions or thinking twice about whether they really need to get out on the roads this winter.