How many times was your street plowed?

By Ken Schwencke

Winter Storm Helena hit over the weekend, dropping an average of 5 to 6 inches of snow over New York City. As the snow fell, the Department of Sanitation deployed plows to 6,000 miles of NYC steets. After picking my way through snowy tire tracks this weekend, I wondered: How many times did a plow come past my door? Using data from PlowNYC, I calculated how many times a plow or salt truck visited a city street between 12 a.m. on Jan. 7 and 11 a.m. on Jan. 8.

These counts are based on how many times a snow-clearing truck's GPS signal was read on a specific street segment. This means you can over-count how often a truck was there (if its signal was read twice on the same segment within a few minutes) or under-count (if its signal was read after it passed a street segment).

Inspired by Derek Watkins' 2013 plow map »