Where are all the plows?
As far as I can tell, my communities latest victim of the tight economy has been our local snow removal budgets. This afternoon graced us with a few new inches of the white stuff and this is what we have to show for it.
Ok, ok...so it's not a blizzard or anything, but it caused plenty of problems this afternoon. Before leaving work I got an email giving notice not to take the freeway either north OR south as there was a 16 car accident one way, and a 9 car mix up the other. Lucky for me, neither was required. A~ had called me before I left as well, to tell me that the roads were a mess and that there had been no plowing done in the 6 hours of snowing that we got, she was right. I crept home safely and was thankful for 4wd.
The thing is this, the snow wasn't really all that bad. Oh sure, it was like 6 inches all told, but for us that's really not all that much. The problem happens when people, who have become used to regularly cleared and salted roads are now thrust into the world of our fathers. I always wondered why my dad always packed chains when we would come to Utah in the winter to go skiing. I'm guessing that the roads weren't as consistently plowed as they have been in the recent past. If we just drive slowly there's no problem, but factor in too much speed, cellphones and texting and well, you get the drift.
I'm guessing that we may yet see more of this kind of cutting back in the future, particularly in the areas of public services. I mean when it comes to things like removing snow, funding schools or keeping the trash disposed of will probably take precedence as it should.
Just an observation of how the times are a changin'. Noticed anything like this in your neck of the woods?
All the best till tomorrow.
P~
Ok, ok...so it's not a blizzard or anything, but it caused plenty of problems this afternoon. Before leaving work I got an email giving notice not to take the freeway either north OR south as there was a 16 car accident one way, and a 9 car mix up the other. Lucky for me, neither was required. A~ had called me before I left as well, to tell me that the roads were a mess and that there had been no plowing done in the 6 hours of snowing that we got, she was right. I crept home safely and was thankful for 4wd.
The thing is this, the snow wasn't really all that bad. Oh sure, it was like 6 inches all told, but for us that's really not all that much. The problem happens when people, who have become used to regularly cleared and salted roads are now thrust into the world of our fathers. I always wondered why my dad always packed chains when we would come to Utah in the winter to go skiing. I'm guessing that the roads weren't as consistently plowed as they have been in the recent past. If we just drive slowly there's no problem, but factor in too much speed, cellphones and texting and well, you get the drift.
I'm guessing that we may yet see more of this kind of cutting back in the future, particularly in the areas of public services. I mean when it comes to things like removing snow, funding schools or keeping the trash disposed of will probably take precedence as it should.
Just an observation of how the times are a changin'. Noticed anything like this in your neck of the woods?
All the best till tomorrow.
P~
Labels:
snow,
Times are changing Tuesday
7 comments:
The plows are still running regularly in my area, but I suspect it's one of those things you just cannot cut much, here where I live.
But I did notice on my last outing that people just don't seem to be out like they used to be. Now, we haven't either, and this was my first shopping trip in like 2 months but I was shocked by the fact that there was only a handful of other cars on the road on the 20mile trip. The town had about 1/3 of it's normal traffic, and the big walmart where everybody HAS to shop (we've talked about this before) was virtually empty. Instead of the usual 10-15 registers open on what used to be a busy Fri night...there were 3, and we weren't over crowded.
We've definitely seen a decrease in winter road maintenance in our area in Michigan. There does seem to be less plowing, but the biggest change that I've noticed is that that they are not salting the roads nearly as well. As a result, we've had very icy, dangerous conditions on several occasions. Just yesterday I was reading in the newspaper about a fire truck that overturned on an ice-covered country road as it was responding to a call. In a neighboring county, there has been public outcry over a few deaths that are being attributed to the extremely icy conditions.
I am 37 and the snow-covered roads remind me of my childhood in the 70's when less plowing and salting was done. In some ways I like it because it forces us to slow down and stay home when the conditions are bad (if possible), but it saddens me to see that people are unnecessarily dying due to improper road maintenance.
We got hit with a doozy of a storm about a week or so ago. I live on a tiny side road, and while our road isn't on any priority list, usually we get plowed at least once during a storm, and then, they'll do a "clean-up" pass after the storm. This time the storm raged for more than twelve hours, and while the major roads were continually maintained throughout the storm, our road was not touched. Our neighbor got stuck at the mouth of the road, because the snow was too deep for her car to get through.
It was just odd.
And then, a few days later, on our regular garbage pick-up day, the truck didn't come until almost evening, which is REALLY unusual. I don't know why they were so late, and maybe it has nothing to do with anything, but it was just odd.
The plows in my area do the main roads , but leave the side roads to turn to pure ICE. Small Streets , Ice covered , Recycling Bins Frozen to the grounds , sometimes frozen shut.
a Foot sized hole in the side of a brittle recycling can after pickup day.
After the city recycling pickup apparently could not chisel out / open the bins we finally got a salting.
One of the reasons that we bought our house was that it was only a few houses from the elementary school. A perk we didn't realize was that we are 1st in line for the plows. It has sure been nice this year.
I know a lot of towns in Northern Utah have cut back on plows according to the news. I just got to make a couple of trips to Snowbird to make all this fresh Utah snow worth it!
The plow guy lives down the way from us. It is the only reason our dirt roads get plowed. (first 3 years here it never was cleared) There are times I wish he wouldn't, the roads are clear but no one can get out of their driveways. Once into the village, only the emergency snow routes are plowed, sometimes.
Detroit never has enough infrastructure for annual winter fun, and this year is worse than I've ever seen it. Last night we had a bout of the dreaded freezing drizzle, and there was a 40 car pileup on a nearby bridge. I heard there were an additional several hundred accidents overnight. What a freaking mess.
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