Around 100 field teams were mobilised during the night of January 4 to clear and shovel snow from the 3,800 JCDecaux bus shelters, kiosks and automatic toilets across the five boroughs of New York City. In early January, the East Coast of the US was struck by another very powerful winter storm, described as a “bomb cyclone”. On January 4, New York City experienced blizzard conditions with strong wind gusts of up to 80 km/hour, snow drifting between 20 and 38 cm in the streets and wind chill temperatures below -20 degrees Celsius.

Following this exceptional snowstorm, around 100 field teams were mobilised during the night of January 4 to clear and shovel snow from the 3,800 JCDecaux bus shelters, kiosks and automatic toilets across the five boroughs of New York City. By the morning, 90% of this street furniture had been cleared, despite very challenging weather conditions. The teams remained on alert for several days, particularly because the snow plows used to clear the streets continued to push back snow onto many street furniture units that had already been cleared!

Using a proprietary JCDecaux web platform, the real-time monitoring of this major snow clearing deployment was performed very efficiently and accurately : all data on the clearing of street furniture units logged by the JCDecaux technicians with their Android smartphone and a proprietary app, were uploaded in real-time ; and the GPS tracking system on all JCDecaux trucks allowed an immediate geo-localization of the crews which could be optimally and safely re-dispatched in case of any emergency or special request from City officials.