The challenge
Lincoln needed to maintain service across roughly 1,200 lane-miles of emergency snow routes, school and commuter bus routes, and highways while controlling chemical use and the cost of repeated storm responses. Before 2014, the city mainly applied purchased anti-icing brine to bridge decks and major intersections. Granular treatment remained central to the broader operation. These conditions and the 2014 transition are described in a 2015 Roads & Bridges article coauthored by Ty Barger.
Ty Barger’s role and approach
As Lincoln’s Public Works Maintenance Manager, Ty helped implement a program that could make and apply customized liquid brines rather than rely primarily on purchased proprietary liquid products. The city built mixing and storage capacity, equipped ten tanker trucks to apply brine, and added saddle tanks to granular spreaders for pre-wetting. The point was to select a treatment suited to forecast conditions and reduce avoidable material use, truck time and repeat deployment.
The first in-house batches exposed a practical problem: a concentrated salt solution crystallized when cold trucks were loaded, clogging spray nozzles. The team lowered concentration and worked with University of Nebraska–Lincoln laboratory equipment to test formulations for crystallization and ice-melting performance. The published study describes eight blends engineered for different temperature ranges, using combinations of sodium chloride and calcium chloride with an additive.
Mix and store customized brines.
Evaluate blends for cold-weather performance.
Match application rates and equipment.
Select treatments for forecast conditions.
What the published record measures
- Application practice: Granular spreaders were recalibrated to a maximum of 300 pounds of sodium chloride per lane-mile, pre-wetted with brine at 20 gallons per ton, versus previous rates of up to 1,000 pounds per lane-mile. These are application-rate settings, not a claim that every route or storm used those amounts.
- Brine production: The article reports average in-house production costs for the city’s sodium- and calcium-chloride brine at 66% less than buying the same volume of proprietary magnesium-chloride brine. That comparison concerns the brine product, not the entire winter maintenance budget.
- Technical development: The 2015 formulation work preceded two related grants naming Ty L. Barger as inventor and the City of Lincoln as assignee: U.S. Patent 10,253,230 B1 (April 9, 2019), and its divisional Patent 11,613,684 B1 (March 28, 2023).
Total-program outcome
Ty reports that the combined changes reduced Lincoln’s total winter maintenance program costs by approximately 30%. His account covers all program costs, including shorter and less frequent deployments of crews and equipment as well as materials. The published technical article independently documents the equipment, chemistry, application rates and brine-cost comparison; it does not publish the baseline, accounting period or calculation behind the 30% total-program figure. That figure is therefore presented here as Ty’s firsthand reported result, rather than as a number independently established by the cited article.
The operational lesson is broader than a recipe for brine: a winter program’s costs depend on when crews are sent out, how long trucks remain deployed, whether a treatment prevents repeat work, how equipment is calibrated, and how well materials perform under the actual pavement conditions. Ty later participated in Nebraska DOT research validating a deicer performance test; that later state project is related professional work, not part of Lincoln’s cost calculation.
Evidence and attribution
- Roads & Bridges, “Customizing brine” (2015) — coauthored by Ty Barger; documents the 1,200 lane-mile scope, 2014 transition, equipment, formulation work, application rates and brine production comparison.
- U.S. Patent 10,253,230 B1 — inventor and assignee record; granted April 9, 2019.
- U.S. Patent 11,613,684 B1 — related divisional grant, March 28, 2023.
- City of Lincoln, adopted 2014–16 budget summary — aggregate Snow Removal appropriations provide context but do not include the storm-adjusted comparison behind the reported 30% reduction.
- Nebraska DOT, Mechanical Rocker Test Validation research brief (2019) — identifies Ty Barger as a lead technical advisory member in later deicer testing work.
Source note: The approximately 30% total-program cost reduction and the contribution of shorter, less frequent employee and equipment deployments come from Ty Barger’s firsthand account. The public budget figures reviewed do not include the comparison and storm-adjusted calculations needed to independently verify that 30% figure.