Waiting for the snow to melt

benfell

See update for January 25, 2022, at end of post.

Un-fucking-believable. One might suspect that a warming—it got into the 40s on Wednesday—is what Pittsburgh Public Works is really counting on to clear its roads. There was still plenty of snow and slush lining travel lanes and I was frequently driving through it to get out of traffic to pick passengers up yesterday (Thursday). This is from a storm that struck on Sunday. It is now Friday and they’re reportedly still trying to clear it.[1]

Meanwhile, one of my passengers yesterday had been in Erie on Tuesday, a city rather spectacularly on Lake Erie, not far from Buffalo, and therefore similarly subject to prodigious lake effect snow.[2] A story on Monday noted that the Erie Streets Department snow plowing operations were being hampered by “people abandoning their cars, and parking on the wrong side of the street.”[3] These problems apparently persisted on Tuesday.[4] But according to my passenger, the streets were mostly clear when she was there Tuesday.

Erie has a lot of streets that are just a little too narrow in residential areas that surround commercial districts in a grid system that means these streets see a lot of traffic. It’s pretty easy to imagine such problems arising. I’m guessing my passenger was mostly on commercial streets.

Portions of Erie County awakened to a foot or more of snow Monday. Erie had the highest total in the state with more than 20 inches as of 10:30 a.m. and 16 inches had accumulated in Cherry Hill as of 7:10 a.m.[5]

Pittsburgh got about seven inches from the same storm;[6] it, too, has narrow streets but in addition is much hillier. Indeed, there are a number of streets—I’m thinking of the South Side Slopes neighborhood—where you might wonder how you could even get a snow plow down them.

But the larger part of the problem in Pittsburgh is that, for whatever reason, Pittsburgh Public Works does not prepare for major snow events[7] and does not keep its equipment in good repair.[8]

“We learned a lot in our first response to snow removal, and I’m here to announce today that we will get better,” [Ed] Gainey said at a news conference Friday at the Department of Public Works’ Division 3 site in Hazelwood. “It has become clear to me that we must make additional investments and improvements in our equipment and operations to effectively and efficiently prepare and respond to winter weather.”[9]

Pittsburgh has been a city for over 200 years. It shouldn’t have been waiting for Ed Gainey’s inauguration to “learn[] a lot” about snow removal or to figure out that it “must make additional investments and improvements in our equipment and operations.”[10]

Update, January 25, 2022: I did go out Monday (January 24), but cut off orders early, as I saw that snow was accumulating on roads even outside the City of Pittsburgh. I came home and read about Pittsburgh Public Works still trying to catch up from Sunday[11] which only reinforces my suspicion that what they’re really counting on is for the temperature to rise so the snow melts.[12] After all, it always works eventually.

It’s now Tuesday and I’m reading about Brookline.[13]

Sorry, Pittsburgh Public Works needs to be shut down, disbanded, and rebuilt from scratch. Fire everyone; make sure they can never get another city job again ever in their lives. This is a culture that must be expunged from government at all levels; the harm it does is to expose government as inept, incompetent, and quite probably corrupt. It rationalizes the capitalist libertarian and neoliberal distrust of government that would privatize everything, even things it makes no sense whatsoever to privatize, and diminish political power in favor of economic power.

Political sanity in the U.S. requires zero tolerance for agencies like Pittsburgh Public Works.

  1. [1]Julia Felton, “Pittsburgh officials say 50 trucks still cleaning snow and ice,” Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, January 20, 2022, https://triblive.com/local/pittsburgh-officials-say-50-trucks-still-cleaning-snow-and-ice/↩
  2. [2]Beth Price-Williams, “Take A Look At Life Inside Erie, The Snowiest Town In Pennsylvania,” Only in Your State, November 12, 2021, https://www.onlyinyourstate.com/pennsylvania/snowiest-town-pa/; SciJinks, “What Is Lake Effect Snow?” n.d., https://scijinks.gov/lake-snow/↩
  3. [3]Jamison Hixenbaugh, “Erie Streets Department Continues to Snow Plow City Roads,” Erie News Now, January 17, 2022, https://www.erienewsnow.com/story/45666994/erie-streets-department-continues-to-snow-plow-city-roads↩
  4. [4]Chelsea Swift, “Plows continue to clear Erie streets of more than a foot of snow following winter storm,” Newsbreak, January 18, 2022, https://www.newsbreak.com/news/2488888468038/plows-continue-to-clear-erie-streets-of-more-than-a-foot-of-snow-following-winter-storm↩
  5. [5]Mark Keller, “PA snowfall totals: Erie approaches 2 feet of snow, high winds a concern across state,” Erie Times-News, January 17, 2022, https://www.goerie.com/story/news/2022/01/17/pa-snowfall-totals-jan-16-17-erie-bucks-york-somerset-beaver-poconos/6554113001/↩
  6. [6]Julia Felton, “Pittsburgh officials say 50 trucks still cleaning snow and ice,” Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, January 20, 2022, https://triblive.com/local/pittsburgh-officials-say-50-trucks-still-cleaning-snow-and-ice/↩
  7. [7]Rick Earle, “Pittsburgh Public Works launches internal investigation following snow response issues,” WPXI, January 7, 2022, https://www.wpxi.com/news/local/pittsburgh-public-works-launches-internal-investigation-following-snow-response-issues/3ZAYYSR5WNCD5H5KE67WJ6SKBU/; Julia Felton, “Pittsburgh officials say snow response will be better ahead of Sunday storm,” Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, January 14, 2022, https://triblive.com/local/pittsburgh-officials-say-snow-response-will-be-better-ahead-of-sunday-storm/↩
  8. [8]Julia Felton, “Pittsburgh officials say 50 trucks still cleaning snow and ice,” Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, January 20, 2022, https://triblive.com/local/pittsburgh-officials-say-50-trucks-still-cleaning-snow-and-ice/; Kylie Walker, “Pittsburgh Public Works releases statement in response to snow removal concerns,” WTAE, January 18, 2022, https://www.wtae.com/article/pittsburgh-public-works-releases-statement-in-response-to-snow-removal-concerns/38803017↩
  9. [9]Julia Felton, “Pittsburgh officials say snow response will be better ahead of Sunday storm,” Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, January 14, 2022, https://triblive.com/local/pittsburgh-officials-say-snow-response-will-be-better-ahead-of-sunday-storm/↩
  10. [10]Ed Gainey, quoted in Julia Felton, “Pittsburgh officials say snow response will be better ahead of Sunday storm,” Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, January 14, 2022, https://triblive.com/local/pittsburgh-officials-say-snow-response-will-be-better-ahead-of-sunday-storm/↩
  11. [11]Julia Felton, “Pittsburgh crews working to clear city streets after Sunday’s snow,” Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, January 24, 2022, https://triblive.com/local/pittsburgh-crews-working-to-clear-city-streets-after-sundays-snow/↩
  12. [12]David Benfell, “Waiting for the snow to melt,” Not Housebroken, January 21, 2022, https://disunitedstates.org/2022/01/21/waiting-for-the-snow-to-melt/↩
  13. [13]WTAE, “Residents in Pittsburgh’s Brookline neighborhood frustrated with snow response,” January 24, 2022, https://www.wtae.com/article/residents-in-pittsburghs-brookline-neighborhood-frustrated-with-snow-response/38876127↩

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