CityX
From practice

Has the snow been cleared on my way? Ploughs and road conditions, on the phone

It snowed all night. The ploughs have been out since four, and the city's phone has been ringing since six. Here is how citizens see for themselves what has been cleared.

Tomislav Krnic

Founder of the smart city project CityX · 3 min read

It has been snowing since yesterday afternoon. In the morning a woman stands at the window with her car keys and one question: can I get to work, and which way? The street outside looks bad. The main road may already be clear, or it may not.

At the same hour the city's winter service has been on the road for half the night. The crews know exactly where they have been. The citizens do not, so they call: when will you come to our street, why has nobody been here, is anyone working at all? The service is doing its job and still looks as if it were not.

The whole city at a glance

The Winter roads service in the CityX app puts the answer on the home screen. The tile leads with one number: the share of the city's roads that are clear. Under it, what is happening now in one line: how hard it is snowing and how much falls in an hour. Next to it, how many ploughs are out and how many kilometres they have covered. A single bar shows the roads from clear to deep snow.

One tap opens the map of the city. Every road is drawn in the colour of its condition, on a scale that reads like winter itself: the whiter and bluer, the more snow. The ploughs are on the map too, each where it is working right now.

The tile on the home screen, the map of the city with its roads and ploughs, and the page that says how hard it is snowing and how much has been cleared.
The tile on the home screen, the map of the city with its roads and ploughs, and the page that says how hard it is snowing and how much has been cleared.
The tile on the home screen, the map of the city with its roads and ploughs, and the page that says how hard it is snowing and how much has been cleared.
The tile on the home screen, the map of the city with its roads and ploughs, and the page that says how hard it is snowing and how much has been cleared.

Under the map, the present is told in plain words: since when it has been snowing, how much has fallen so far, the temperature, how much snow lies on the ground. A row of bars shows the last twelve hours. Then comes the sentence the winter service has always wanted citizens to hear: how many ploughs are on the road, and how much of the city they have passed since the snow began.

My way, not the whole map

A citizen does not drive the whole city. They drive one route. So the service asks one thing: where are you going? It answers with the way there and its condition along the way: how much of it is clear, how much has light snow, how much is deep, and the worst stretch by name.

A plough at work on the map, and a route with its condition along the way and the worst stretch named.
A plough at work on the map, and a route with its condition along the way and the worst stretch named.
A plough at work on the map, and a route with its condition along the way and the worst stretch named.

That is a decision, not a weather report. Leave now or in an hour. Take the main road or the shorter one. Go by car or leave it at home today. And a tap on a plough says what it is doing at that moment, clearing or gritting, so nobody has to wonder whether anyone is out there.

What it takes

A winter service whose vehicles know where they drive, as most already do today, and the city's decision to show that to its citizens. The crews work exactly as before. Nobody at the city draws maps or writes reports during a snowstorm.

Snow is the day on which a city is judged most harshly and thanked the least. It is also the day on which citizens most want to hear from it. A city that shows where the ploughs have been does not have to explain that it is working. Everyone can see it.