The City of Peoria’s snow removal crews have been working around the clock to clear roadways after a double dose of accumulation over a three-day span.
Public Works Department deputy director Sie Maroon says the back-to-back systems totaled about 5½ inches of snow Saturday, followed by another 2½ inches Monday.
Maroon said the department’s operations through the first significant snowfall of the season “went pretty well,” and the plows were moving back onto residential streets as of Tuesday morning.
“We had a little bit of help with the temperatures up until today; now we’ve dropped into the teens, so that makes a little more difficult,” said Maroon. “But our primary arterial streets are in pretty good shape.
“There’s a little bit of slush on in some areas, but outside of that they’re pretty solid as far as being able to travel on anything and everything.”
The city still urged drivers to take caution Tuesday, noting many secondary streets had slick patches and bridges and shaded areas are more prone to icy conditions.
As of this year, the city no longer has an agreement with the Illinois Department of Transportation [IDOT] that gave Peoria authority to handle snow removal on Illinois state routes within city limits, such as Adams Street [Illinois 29], Knoxville Avenue [Illinois 40] and Howett Street [Illinois 116].
Maroon says fears that the change might result in delayed attention to those roadways did not come to fruition.
“From what I’ve seen, they have covered the state routes very, very well,” he said. “Truthfully, what it’s done is it’s taken a little bit of a load off of us and allow us to concentrate on some other areas. But on their end, I give them some praise because it turned out great.”
Maroon said it’s been quite some time since Peoria experienced consecutive major snowfalls in a short time span as the first significant winter storms.
“For the last several years, we’ve had very little snow – well, hardly any in November – but we even just didn’t have too much in December,” he said. “This time, it just came out with a bang and hit us in both months.”
Maroon said the public works department hasn’t fielded too many calls with complaints or concerns from residents over the past few days.
“They must be satisfied with what we’re doing, and hopefully they are because we do work hard at what we do,” said Maroon. “There’s just been a couple of them that wanted to give us a heads-up that they’ve got a medical patient and that they might need some assistance if anything would happen, and we certainly do address that as soon as possible.”
The city’s crews have been working in 12-hour shifts around the clock since the storm began, continually treating the roads and clearing the snow.
“We’re rolling into about the fourth day of it, and we’re going to end that later on tonight, after we spend the day doing our residential streets,” said Maroon, who urged drivers to stay alert and be considerate of the plow teams.
“As we go, just know that we’re going to be out there on the street helping people get into where they need to go,” he said. “If you see a plow truck, just give us that space. It’s a matter of seconds, and we’ll be out of your way.”
