DALLAS — The City of Dallas Transportation and Infrastructure Committee met Tuesday to discuss the city's latest update to its ice event preparation: the addition of brine to roads prior to freezing events.
Ali Hatefi, director of the Dallas Department of Public Works, said during the meeting that Dallas City Council approved the purchase of brine earlier this year.
"Brine is a pre-treatment for the roads that helps prevent ice from forming," Hatefi told committee members. "Given the ice events we've had in the past few years, we want to do something proactive, versus just the reactive sanding that we do after the fact."
Hatefi said the brine would be used on bus routes to prevent DART buses from shutting down as they have during previous freezing events.
A memo to committee members said that, historically, the city has relied upon de-icing applications such as sand to respond to these events, so this new process will add anti-icing protection ahead of these de-icing solutions.
Treatments for bridges, overpasses, intersections and inclines will be prioritized, the memo stated, and other areas critical to public safety, like hospitals and fire stations.
This new process comes after a winter storm last February, when the Dallas Fire Department responded to more than 750 accidents in 24 hours, and 45 public works trucks were sent out to sand bridges and overpasses.
In 2021, there was also a major pileup on I-35 West in Fort Worth resulting in six deaths. A report from the NTSB released two years later determined the company responsible for maintaining the road had failed to address the icy road conditions.