Potential Impacts of a Multipurpose Snow Removal Instrument on Snow Removal

A multipurpose snow removal instrument is being developed to help effectively remove snow on the roads from urban areas. The instrument is detachable from a regular cargo truck and consists of a blower and a snow melter. The blower transports snow from the road surface to the melting tank and the water melted in the tank is drained away to sewers on the roadsides. The main purpose of the instrument is to melt away snow quickly from the road surface. The rapid snow removal is expected to recover road capacity considerably. This study is to evaluate its effectiveness by incorporating microscopic traffic simulation modeling and travel demand elasticity with respect to snowfall. The simulation analysis result shows that the multipurpose snow removal instrument helps increase traffic volume by 6% and travel speed by 13% when compared with those of ordinary snowplows.