Mayor LaFrance announces a new one-stop-shop website for snow updates

Today marks the first snowfall of the season and municipal crews worked overnight and will be operating throughout the day to clear the roads. Mayor Suzanne LaFrance announced the launch of www.muni.org/plow, a new, mobile-friendly one-stop website providing comprehensive snow updates to the public.

Residents can visit the site for plowing updates sector by sector to understand the who, what, when, and where of snowplowing operations in the Municipality.  When GPS devices are deployed on snow equipment later this winter, the website will reflect a plow-by-plow level of detail.  The website can also be accessed from the top of the main page of www.muni.org (click on “snow removal").

"We can't control the weather, but we can control our preparedness and communication," said Mayor Suzanne LaFrance. "With our snow crews working, we're making sure residents have what they need to stay safe and informed."

The administration has been preparing for snowfall since summer. Municipal Manager Becky Windt Pearson has led a Snow Solutions Team to align operations, coordination, and communication across the 12 municipal departments involved in clearing the city of snow.

“Anchorage is a winter city, and snow is part of our reality," Municipal Manager Becky Windt Pearson said. “If we can provide reliable and consistent communications, we give residents the information they need to be part of snow preparation and response."

Making public communication clearer and more consistent has been a top priority. In the fall, the Snow Solutions Team engaged Anchorage's Innovation Team, known as the i-team, which works with departments to use data, technology, and human-centered design to solve problems. The i-team identified at least eight different municipal webpages containing snow removal information. They put the most important information in an easy to digest format and added additional forms for submitting requests and reports. 

The Snow Solutions Team and the i-team combed through comment and question data from previous years, and connected with stakeholders to design and build a single site that would speak to the public's most pressing concerns. It also allows residents to report street and transit issues to the Municipality.

“Our work on the i-team focuses on low-cost interventions that improve everyday life in Anchorage," Chief Innovation Officer Brendan Babb said. “We asked ourselves — if it was snowing overnight, and a resident picked up their phone in the morning, what information would they need to make decisions? We built the website to be a mobile-friendly response to resident needs."

With snow falling overnight and into the morning, the website's timely launch gives people a critical tool to stay safe and be prepared with the arrival of winter.