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Residents of Syracuse, New York \u2014 America\u2019s snowiest city \u2014 once barraged a service hotline with street neglect complaints during blizzards,<\/a> even if plows had passed two hours earlier but the work was hidden by fresh snow.<\/p>\n Now public trust seems to be rising as Syracuse and other cities across the U.S. integrate upgrades such as video monitoring, GPS mapping and artificial intelligence<\/a> into snow operations that once relied almost entirely on manual planning.<\/p>\n Syracuse was one of the first to revamp the way it deploys its snowplows, and complaint calls have dropped by 30% under the new system, said Conor Muldoon, the city\u2019s chief innovation officer.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople will look out their window and say, \u2018Hey, you guys are doing a terrible job,\u2019\u201d Muldoon said. \u201cAnd we can point to a public map and say, \u2018Here\u2019s all the breadcrumbs for when that plow was there.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Each winter, Syracuse averages 126 inches (3.2 meters) of snow, more than any other U.S. city of at least 100,000 people. Even before the blizzard that pounded the Northeast<\/a> last week, the city had already surpassed its typical average due to a record 2-foot (60-centimeter) accumulation on one day in late December.<\/p>\n With a goal of clearing every street within 24 hours after a storm, Syracuse partnered in 2021 with San Francisco-based Samsara to put live GPS tracking and dashcams on city fleet vehicles including snowplows.<\/a> Integrated with GIS mapping software, the system allows officials to monitor live video and plow locations in real time.<\/p>\n While residents can\u2019t access live feeds, they can view a public map that updates every 5 minutes to show which roads have been cleared.<\/p>\n Samsara started incorporating AI into its products in 2019. This winter, for the first time, it has provided customers with footage from other cameras within its large network, helping officials better understand conditions on a street even when no worker is there.<\/p>\n Kiren Sekar, the company’s chief product officer, cited an example of needing to dispatch the closest plow for a snow emergency in Plainwell, Michigan.<\/p>\n \u201cRather than having to sift through a list of vehicles, it can actually figure this out: \u2018We’ve got Trevor in vehicle 203, 15 minutes away,’\u201d Sekar said.<\/p>\n Samsara partners with communities of various sizes to upgrade their snowplow systems, but the nation’s largest city \u2014 New York City<\/a> \u2014 developed its own.<\/p>\n Its tracking program known as BladeRunner monitors snow removal equipment (including garbage trucks with plows attached) while a human in a command center \u2014 not AI \u2014 analyzes the GPS data. The city is exploring AI in the future to process the thousands of 311 calls and online service requests it can get in a single day.<\/p>\n The other way the big city’s approach differs from its upstate neighbor of Syracuse is that every block gets the same treatment, with each plow assigned a specific route during a storm. Typically 99% of the city’s roads will be plowed within the first four hours after a moderate snowfall under ideal conditions, but it didn’t quite meet that mark during last week’s historic storm, said Joshua Goodman, deputy commissioner at the city\u2019s Department of Sanitation. <\/p>\n Goodman said all streets in New York City get the same treatment, regardless of whether they are main or side streets.<\/p>\n \u201cSo what it does is allow equity,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n