City Of Tulsa Snow Plows Target More Neighborhood Streets

Emory Bryan, News On 6

TULSA, Oklahoma -- The City of Tulsa continues to refine its strategy for clearing the streets. Now, they're adding private contractors to the workforce.

Those new contractors are coming onto the job and will be working alongside city crews to clear the streets. They'll work to absolutely clear the main streets before moving into the biggest neighborhood streets.

They won't get that job done before more snow falls.

02/07/2011 Related Story: Winter Storm Warning Issued For Much Of Northeastern Oklahoma

It's another day of long hours for Derrick Coats with Allied Towing. He's loaded up this sports car that was stuck in slushy snow at 33rd and South New Haven.

The owner made it two blocks from her home.

"These side roads are pretty bad and people aren't realizing it. We'll do what we can, and get out what we can," Coats said.

For many drivers, the side roads are the problem, but once they get out--if they can--the main roads are clear.

In most cases, big piles of snow are on the side of the four lane streets, but the city is working on that.

"We're continuing to plow along the edge of major streets where we didn't get everything," said Paul Strizek, City of Tulsa. "A lot of these four lanes streets we have two through lanes and two half lanes. So, we're trying to go back and get that out of there, and it's difficult because some of it is as hard as concrete."

In the last week, City of Tulsa employees worked 9,300 hours to plow 36,000 lane miles of major streets. They also spread 1,800 tons of salt.

Now, they're moving some efforts onto the widest neighborhood streets, like Pittsburgh, which is passable for some cars, but not all.

Over the weekend, the City cleaned up downtown with plows, and that illustrates the problem that plowing around cars can create. The cars get walled in, and owners have a hard time getting them out.

That's one reason the City doesn't plow narrow neighborhood streets, besides the lack of resources to do it.

According to the City, they'll stick to the biggest, most heavily traveled streets, and keep plowing, most likely well into next weekend.

The new contractors have added 20 pieces of equipment to the effort, and more start tomorrow. It's a new direction for the city, but they say this will be standard procedure from now on.

02/07/2011 Related Story: City Of Tulsa Changes Snow Plowing, Removal Strategy