Snow removal

[Mergingtraffic]

In New York City, the Sanitation Department has primary responsibility for plowing the streets, so most (all?) trash trucks have plows.

I always found that quite odd,the biggest city in the U.S. New York that gets snow every year...sometimes a lot of snow uses garbage trucks as plows, not actual dump trucks.

Even more amazing some streets don't get plowed out for days.

[cpzilliacus]

In New York City, the Sanitation Department has primary responsibility for plowing the streets, so most (all?) trash trucks have plows.

I always found that quite odd,the biggest city in the U.S. New York that gets snow every year...sometimes a lot of snow uses garbage trucks as plows, not actual dump trucks.

Even more amazing some streets don't get plowed out for days.

Most refuse collection trucks in New York City appear to be large and heavy enough to be good for plowing snow (tandem axles, and if loaded with trash, reasonably heavy). 

I assume that snow removal is assigned to the N.Y. City Sanitation Department as a historical "accident."  But perhaps they have a larger fleet of trucks than the New York City Department of Transportation is able to deploy.

[kphoger]

In all seriousness, the Seattle area and Portland area get shut down if we get more than 3" of accumulation since we don't get snow often enough to justify a fleet of plows.

Seriously?  Three inches isn't very much snow, and people here would have little trouble getting around without the roads being plowed at all.

[Brandon]

In all seriousness, the Seattle area and Portland area get shut down if we get more than 3" of accumulation since we don't get snow often enough to justify a fleet of plows.

Seriously?  Three inches isn't very much snow, and people here would have little trouble getting around without the roads being plowed at all.

My thoughts as well.  Even in Chicagoland, they could get around, and ruts would form very quickly.  Up north, 3" is merely a days worth of flurry activity.

[Kacie Jane]

In all seriousness, the Seattle area and Portland area get shut down if we get more than 3" of accumulation since we don't get snow often enough to justify a fleet of plows.

Seriously?  Three inches isn't very much snow, and people here would have little trouble getting around without the roads being plowed at all.

Yes, seriously.  And I think even 3" is giving them (us?) too much credit.

[corco]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhZCyQ3emQg

While, yes, that is an icy hill note how nearly everyone steers the wrong way when they start sliding, nearly nobody threshold brakes (yes that helps, even with ABS), and lots of folks don't slow down to pay attention to what is going on before they start driving down it.

Seattle drivers are obscenely awful in snow.

I remember when I was living up there and there was a huge storm (6 inches or so) just before Christmas '08 as we were getting out from school. Friends of mine told me that they felt they needed to leave their car sitting on I-5 in Vancouver while driving back to California because it was such a disaster- I couldn't ever imagine leaving my car abandoned on a freeway.

[Kacie Jane]

I remember when I was living up there and there was a huge storm (6 inches or so) just before Christmas '08

That would be the time I rented a car to go back down to Seattle to visit the family, and myself and two other customers had to help each other dig our cars out of the lot ourselves if we wanted to go anywhere.  And this was the Hertz airport location, mind you, not some podunk local outfit.  Pacific Northwest and snow do not mix, period.

[Scott5114]

It's a similar situation in Oklahoma City. The city shuts down in the snow. Most of the drivers don't have the requisite experience to drive in snow, since it only snows once or twice per year here. So even if it's not much, and you are perfectly capable of driving in it due to experience gained in a snowier city, it's still safer to stay home because someone else is quite likely to lose control and crash into you.

[Brandon]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhZCyQ3emQg

While, yes, that is an icy hill note how nearly everyone steers the wrong way when they start sliding, nearly nobody threshold brakes (yes that helps, even with ABS), and lots of folks don't slow down to pay attention to what is going on before they start driving down it.

Seattle drivers are obscenely awful in snow.

I remember when I was living up there and there was a huge storm (6 inches or so) just before Christmas '08 as we were getting out from school. Friends of mine told me that they felt they needed to leave their car sitting on I-5 in Vancouver while driving back to California because it was such a disaster- I couldn't ever imagine leaving my car abandoned on a freeway.

My God they're terrible.  They'd never make it in Houghton, Michigan.  Steep hills and snow/ice covered streets.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeqG0CqzHq4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D98C1RGcYz4 Note there are no lines as the pavement is covered in a crust of snow.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ds2cHkmtQTI

[KEK Inc.]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhZCyQ3emQg

While, yes, that is an icy hill note how nearly everyone steers the wrong way when they start sliding, nearly nobody threshold brakes (yes that helps, even with ABS), and lots of folks don't slow down to pay attention to what is going on before they start driving down it.

Seattle drivers are obscenely awful in snow.

I remember when I was living up there and there was a huge storm (6 inches or so) just before Christmas '08 as we were getting out from school. Friends of mine told me that they felt they needed to leave their car sitting on I-5 in Vancouver while driving back to California because it was such a disaster- I couldn't ever imagine leaving my car abandoned on a freeway.

Grab some popcorn.  This never gets old:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaksWCnHaDM

Most of the native people in Seattle and Portland have little to no experience driving in icy conditions.  It only happens once a year for like half a week, and they're generally on top of ice relatively quickly.  Only the ski-goers barely know how to drive in the snow. 

And I remember the 2008 storm.  I was in Vancouver when that happened.  They decided to cancel school at 7:28 -- 2 minutes before high schools start.  So my dad had to drive me back home, and I-5 was a frightfest with big rigs sliding sideways into other cars.

[deathtopumpkins]

I was genuinely surprised at how well both MassDOT and local towns did at clearing snow after the first major (by my standards anyway) storm since I moved up here 2 years ago. My tiny one-lane street was plowed before the snow stopped falling, and the plow/salt truck came by easily a hundred more times over the next couple days. I've been doing small road trips essentially every day ever since that snow, and have yet to find a single road in Mass, New Hampshire, or Vermont that is not completely snow and ice-free, even out in places that got two feet of snow, on roads that aren't even paved.

This is quite the contrast to southeastern Virginia, where I recall after the Christmas 2010 storm that dumped a record (IIRC anyway) 18 inches of snow, VDOT brought in plows from out west and had the interstates and rural roads cleared in a matter of days, but the cities did not own plows for the most part, and so nothing in the cities got plowed. At all. Until the snow melted a week later the roads were a complete mess, as you just drove on top of the snow and ice as best you could.

[corco]

Having lived in several places that get a lot of snow, I will admit that Seattle/Portland's road surfaces are uniquely bad because of the freeze-thaw cycle- there's typically no layer of packed snow to give added traction, just ice so it's more slick than normal.

That said...

[InterstateNG]

My God they're terrible.  They'd never make it in Houghton, Michigan.  Steep hills and snow/ice covered streets.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeqG0CqzHq4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D98C1RGcYz4 Note there are no lines as the pavement is covered in a crust of snow.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ds2cHkmtQTI

And yet, a lot of people in Michigan can't handle driving in the snow either, despite years of experience.