The long vehicle lineups at the Grohman Narrows Transfer Station could be a thing of the past.
A new project will see the resource recovery facility on Insight Drive — five kilometres west of the city — employ new technology to track and process vehicles faster than previously.
The wait time to deposit waste at the facility has grown over the last few years — after re-locating several years ago from the city’s waterfront — with the changes to recycling, COVID-19 and the rising cost of waste disposal.
Utilizing new software, including licence plate scanners for each scaled facility and a dedicated cloud server, the resource recovery facility will be able to move people at a quicker pace through the growing lineups at the facility.
The automated licence plate readers (ALPRs) capture computer-readable images of license plates. These high-tech devices are used primarily by law enforcement agencies to compare plate numbers against those of stolen cars.
The Regional District of Central Kootenay will enter into a licensing agreement with Strong Data Automation — for a three-year term with two possible one-year extensions, at a cost of $57,550 for 2022 and an ongoing cost of $44,700 — to provide new software for resource recovery facilities.
“With more accurate and complete tracking capabilities, the new software will help staff make better, informed decisions, but most importantly improve the overall user experience with faster, more efficient processing,” noted a release from the regional district on the matter.
Regional district staff will begin investigating additional options of purchasing Strong Data Automation’s customer online portal, unattended transaction kiosks and/or cashless prepaid cards for future consideration.
The regional district will also include in the West Sub Region budget for a scale software replacement project, a waste composition study, a systems efficiency review and a cost recovery model.