Arlington’s Department of Environmental Services starts planning for potential winter weather several months in advance, and ahead of this winter, the agency considered whether it would be more fun for the public if it accepted name recommendations for snowplows.
So in the fall, for the first time, the agency used an online form to accept suggestions from community members. Peter Golkin, a spokesman for the Department of Environmental Services, said they tried to avoid names of specific communities in Arlington, because that could mean some were represented while others wouldn’t be.
Some recommendations were tied to names of local officials, but those were rejected too, “because some of them are in positions of power in the county, and we like to get our paychecks,” Golkin joked. Others were names of celebrities without a wintry spin.
The agency received hundreds of suggestions, Golkin said, and put them all in a spreadsheet. They finalized the list during “a closed-door session, in an unnamed, secure location,” he said.
“Sometimes we laughed, sometimes we didn’t,” Golkin said.
That session produced plow names like “Alex Snowvechkin,” “Smithsnownian,” “Snowprah Winfrey” and “Taylor Drift.” The names of each plow is labeled on Arlington’s online dashboard, which shows where the plows are.
“When you see a vehicle moving, it probably moved through that street maybe 15-20 minutes earlier, and that’s for security purposes,” Golkin said. “And then if you click on each vehicle, that’s when the magical new name will appear.”
But the agency was scrambling when this week’s weather brought so much snow that they realized they’d need to add contractor snow plows.
“We couldn’t have unnamed plows out there alongside the ones that did get named ‘Taylor Drift’ or ‘Dwight D. Eisenplower,’” Golkin said.
The group started accepting suggestions again, which produced contractor plows named “Ice Force One” and “Virginia is for Shovelers,” among others.
“It’s fun, and it adds enjoyment to the first big snowfall in several years,” Golkin said.
The agency, he said, tries to make the information it shares “as enjoyable as possible, so that people will come back and get updates when they need them.”
Golkin suspects Arlington will be naming its plows again next year, though it’s unclear whether they’ll use the same names or accept recommendations for new ones.
“For now, there seems to be a very positive public affection for putting names to the plows,” he said.
