Highways and thoroughfares will be the top priority and once those are safe for travel, the city will focus on treating hills and intersections, officials said Wednesday night.
The city will only clear residential streets when they have 4 inches or more of snow or ice on them. The city will only plow these streets and not use salt.
In order to manage the limited supplies, the city also plans to reduce the amount of salt it uses to treat roads to about 100 to 300 pounds per lane mile from 500 to 600 pounds, Fred Stovall, Dayton's director of public works, said Wednesday night.
Drivers will have to learn to apply the salt more conservatively instead of reapplying the same roads multiple times, except for highly traveled roads, he said. The city plans to increase the amount of a beet juice brine mixture it uses to melt snow and ice.
"We're going to have slushy roads, but our goal again would be to make them driveable," he said.
The city has about 1,718 lane miles in Dayton, which includes the highways.
The city will have to monitor the weather and develop road treatment plans based on the specifics of each individual weather event, Stovall said. The city will plow parking lots that are cleared for public facilities, but will not treat them with salt.
The city has ordered another shipment of salt, which would double its supply, but the order is not guaranteed and may not arrive before the first snowfall.
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