During last month’s back-to-back snow storms, the Kansas Department of Transportation reports their snow crews pretreated and plowed nearly 880,000 miles of highway – enough to circle the earth 35 times.
BY THE NUMBERS
Winter Storms Q and Rocky (weeks of Feb. 18 and 25)
- 575 – Approximate number of KDOT trucks used to clear roads
- 879,000 – Lane miles pretreated and plowed (The Kansas highway system has approximately 25,000 lane miles.)
- 80,000 – Hours logged by about 1,200 KDOT employees
- 16,400 – Tons of salt used
- 37,000 – Tons of salt/sand mix
- 1.2 million – Gallons of brine
- $6.2 million – Estimated cost of both storms
- $2.25 – Approximate cost of both storms per registered Kansas vehicle
- 73,993 – Calls to 511 travel information
- 8,716 – Subscribers to “My Kansas 511” who received personalized road information
- 17,376 – Number of times road conditions viewed on mobile devices at 511.ksdot.org
- 9 million – Page views on the KDOT website
The storms dumped up to two feet of snow on the state over a week-long period beginning Feb. 20. Because the storms, named Q and Rocky, came on the heels of one another, crews got little or no rest between cleanup from one storm and preparation for the next.
“As impressive as the numbers are, statistics don’t tell the whole story,” said Transportation Secretary Mike King in a news release. “Our crews plowed through white-outs, helped motorists get their cars out of the snow, changed tires, checked on the welfare of stranded travelers and successfully performed a life-saving plow relay in blizzard conditions to get a patient to medical treatment hundreds of miles away."
