DIA equipment operator Jeff Murfield let the broom down on his $709,000 snow-removal machine on Wednesday and swept the length of runway 16Left/34Right in formation with more than a dozen other pieces of equipment.
It was 75 degrees and sunny, but Murfield and the rest of Denver International Airport’s field maintenance team were doing “dry runs” for the upcoming snow season in new “multifunction” machines that can plow, sweep and air-blast snow. Some even can sand or spray liquid anti-icing chemicals as well.
DIA officials hope the new machines will allow maintenance crews to halve the time needed to clean runways and their high-speed taxiways during heavy snowstorms compared with previous years.
In the past, crews typically spent 45 to 50 minutes in such conditions cleaning a runway and associated taxiways, said Jeff Bartleson, DIA’s assistant director of field maintenance.
“I’ve been doing snow removal for 24 years. I’m excited that with one pass we can clean and get off,” Bartleson said.
Millions invested
DIA will start this season with 30 of the new machines for work on top priority runways and taxiways during snowstorms. They cost a total of $23 million.
The airport expects to add 10 more of the big machines, bringing the price tag for the full acquisition to about $32 million, with the Federal Aviation Administration picking up a good chunk of the cost.
“A purchase of this much equipment is unprecedented,” Bartleson said.
Up to now DIA has relied on teams of as many as 52 vehicles — each with discrete functions such as plowing, sweeping, snow blowing, sanding and chemical spraying — to clean runways and high-priority taxiways. The complex choreography involved in using so much equipment added time to the process and sometimes created problems for drivers.
Driving a broom “can create your own little whiteout,” said Murfield, who is looking forward to seeing how the new machines perform.
“It will be interesting to see when we get the good one,” he said of the first big snow test for the new equipment.
After a blizzard in December 2006 forced the closure of DIA for nearly two days, a consultant recommended the acquisition of multifunction machines as one way to better battle winter storms that sweep across the 53-square-mile facility.
The airport has spent about $7.4 million so far on eight machines made by the Swiss company Boschung and $15.6 million on 22 units made by two Wisconsin manufacturers — Oshkosh Truck Corp. and M-B Companies. Oshkosh makes the tractor and M-B produces the plow and trailer with broom and air blaster.
Invested in cutting delays
Seventy-five percent of the cost of the Oshkosh/M-B machines is being covered by the FAA because the equipment is U.S.-made.
“When we saw the delay savings this new equipment would yield we decided to pursue federal funding,” said DIA finance chief Stan Koniz.
DIA is getting eight more Boschung units and two more of the domestic machines.
This season, 13 of the Oshkosh/M-B machines, one plow and one broom will do work on DIA’s west side runways that last year required 14 plows and 14 brooms, Bartleson said.
Thirteen are needed on the west side because runway 16Right/34Left — at 16,000 feet, one of the longest in the world — also is unusually wide, at 200 feet. All of DIA’s other runways are 12,000 feet long and 150 feet wide; for snow clearing, they need nine of the new machines traveling in formation.
DIA also will spend up to $6 million on contractors who will clear and melt snow from ramp areas between concourses. They will rely on large melters that each can melt as much as 600 tons of snow an hour.
