Development of Chloride Reduction Training

The purpose of this project was to create a training program that could be used for Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) personnel who operated snow plows and spread road salt during winter storms. The training message was built around the three main goals of winter maintenance: safety, mobility, and environmental protection. The concept of winter maintenance operations being a system was introduced early in the training and stressed throughout. Another goal of the project was to develop a method or tool by which the effectiveness of the training could be measured. Achieving that goal requires the ability to compare quantities of salt used by IDOT (or some subset of IDOT, such as a maintenance garage) over winters before and after the training is provided. The method presented herein uses a storm severity index, summed over the whole winter season. This allows for comparison between two winters to be made by use of the index. Thus, as shown in the report, for the Moline maintenance district, the winter of 2012–13 can be compared with the winter of 2013–14. This comparison shows that the cumulative index for the 2012–13 winter was 13.20, while it was 26.88 for the 2013–14 winter. In other words the winter of 2013–14 was significantly worse than the winter that preceded it.Illinois Department of Transportation, R27-147Ope