The first blizzard of the upcoming winter might have residents asking: “Where’s my app?”



The city is shutting off the Where Is My Plow application for public use after a rocky launch of the web-based tool last winter.



Public works general manager Kevin Wylie and roads manager Luc Gagné confirmed the app won’t be available publicly for the 2016-2017 season.



“We’re re-working it right now,” Wylie told the Sun on Wednesday.



The GPS-powered app, which was developed by city staff, was billed as a solution for people eager to find out when their streets would be plowed after significant snowfall.



The problem is, the app only provided information on plows working on streets classified as residential. Arterial and collector roads wouldn’t show any plows. That means if you live on Prince of Wales Drive or Woodroffe Avenue, for example, it appeared like there were no plows at all, even though there were plows and salters working the streets. In fact, those streets are mandated to have the fastest plow response.



But people generally don’t know the classification of their streets. All that they knew was there wasn’t a plow coming anytime soon, according to the app.



“There was a ton of confusion about it,” Wylie said.



The app received brutal reviews out of the gate, especially when it wasn’t working while the city was getting buried in a snowstorm last December. The glitches prompted the city’s communications team to rewrite the messages on the tool to better manage people’s expectations. The city was still trying to iron out the wrinkles over the season.



Councillors and the 311 call centre are typically inundated with calls from constituents wondering when a plow would come to their streets, so the app was seen as one way to let residents check for themselves.



There were still calls, of course, and they included those from people wondering what was wrong with Where Is My Plow.



The app, which was always considered a pilot project, isn’t a total failure.



The city still plans to keep the app operational behind the scenes for its own tracking and data analysis.



“It’s a good operational tool,” Gagné said.



Knoxdale-Merivale Coun. Keith Egli, who chairs the council committee in charge of snowplowing, said the city tried to do something different from other municipalities to keep residents in the loop on street clearing. The messaging was one of the biggest problems, he said.



“We bit off quite a bit,” Egli said.



jwilling@postmedia.com



