Lincoln officials say it’s been struggle to clear roads

On Monday, city officials held a briefing about their efforts to make driving easier.

They said there were 90 units out and that they would continue working overnight.

“We continue to have units out also patrolling and spreading a lot of material on arterial routes,” Assistant Transportation Director Lonnie Burklund said.  “Dropping blades as well, cleaning up slush.”

They said they’re uncomfortably low on salt and that they only have enough for one or two more storms.

“We were sitting at about 20 percent on our salt capacity before this event and we estimate that we’re probably going to use 10 to 15 percent of that up on this event,” Operations and Maintenance Manager Tim Byrne said.

They said the low temperatures have slowed down their progress.  They said it’s tough on their diesel equipment and that the salt they’ve been spreading is not effective below 15 degrees.

“We had sub–zero temperatures last night,” Byrne said.  The five–to–seven–day outlook doesn’t look very good either for us.  So we try to take advantage of sunshine and slightly warmer pavement temperatures during the day to get as much cleared and melted down as we can.”

And the city urges drivers: if you see any road crews, stay back 100 feet to avoid any potential collisions.

If you feel like your street needs to be serviced, there is an application you can submit online for that.  Visit: 
snow.lincoln.ne.gov