Town of Shrewsbury Snowplow Route Optimization Services

Quetica was awarded a project to work with the Town of Shrewsbury, MA (Shrewsbury) to provide snowplow route optimization, dispatch and navigation services. The primary goal of the route optimization was to streamline snow and ice program operations across Shrewsbury’s network comprised of 320+ lane miles of roads, 12-15 miles of private streets, 25-30 miles of sidewalks, and all town owned facilities, including parking lots.

The objective was to identify the optimal routes to plow and treat Shrewsbury’s network that minimized costs while accounting for operational constraints (e.g., truck and driver availability, material spread rates, etc.) and meeting level of service requirements. The optimized winter maintenance routing structure both improved asset utilization, by reducing the number of winter maintenance routes, and reduced large disparities in by producing more balanced routes. Shrewsbury expects to reduce long-term transportation, material, and operating cost-savings while simultaneously improving service levels and operational agility.

Shrewsbury utilizes Quetica’s Route Dispatch + Navigation system to dispatch operational plans of the optimized routes to drivers in the field for upcoming storms. Once dispatched, drivers are able to access turn-by-turn navigation for routes assigned to them and provide real-time progress updates and other operational feedback to supervisors in the shop.