The Road to Hell is Ice Rutted
January 6th, 2010 at 11:25 am By John Van Hecke
This morning, I received a Tweet from St Paul’s Public Works Department, asking subscribers to report unsafe road conditions. Hmmm. Since most of St Paul’s streets are ice rutted and unsafe, I’m torn between a cranky Soucherian rant and the contextual, big picture approach.
Let’s go big picture.
Every media outlet, without fail, has recently reported the “icy streets are a nightmare/we need some near-thawing weather to remediate conditions” story. This is true. St Paul’s Public Works employees are gamely clearing street intersection snow banks, improving driver sightlines and doing what subzero weather permits. They can’t skim ice-bound streets down to the pavement because uncooperative physics and high equipment breakdown rates reveal the work as a truly Sisyphean task.
No city or county public works department is awash in excess budget funds. For that, we can thank conservative state public policymakers. They continuously insist that cities, counties and school districts live within their means while unilaterally terminating the efficient, successful state revenue sharing agreement. In practice, this means that cities, counties and school districts are bearing a much, much greater funding cutback burden than their state agency counterparts. Local government has aggressively trimmed spending and reluctantly raised property taxes. State government has not.
Our ice rutted streets are a metaphor for the conservative public policy approach. They compound a manageable collective problem by making it worse. The correct answer is a strong, vigorous snow plowing and removal strategy during and immediately after a blizzard. Instead, we have ice ruts.
Minnesotans possess great winter survival experience. We understand that heavy, wet snow fall, fueled by low pressure warm air masses are frequently followed by brutally cold, arctic sourced, high pressure conditions. We also know that snow clearing never improves with time. We’ve successfully applied that lesson to much of our lives, creating a state that is truly greater than the sum of its parts.
We get what we pay for, Minnesota. Or rather, we get what we don’t. You can TweetQuote me on that.
Tags: Budget, icy roads, LGA, property taxes, snowplowing, Snowplows
Is this really a funding problem? If the public works departments really felt unprepared, shouldn’t this article have been written in November? It was the biggest storm in years, nature surprises again. The plowing crews did a good enough job that it didn’t stop me from driving anywhere. job well done.
I’ve lived on a snow emergency route corner in NE Minneapolis opposite to two churches for 12 years. My neighbors have lived here their entire lives walking the sidewalks to their church a few times a week. I learned quickly to keep my sidewalks clear and ice free for them. I was out with my snowblower during that storm/thaw/freeze 3 day period and was BEGGING for the snowplows to come through so I could clear the curb before it froze up. No luck. Here’s my snow emergency time schedule: Snow Emergency declared daytime: ran a plow down the middle of road. People moved their cars during that night, No Plow came down during the night or the next day. Melty snow was shoveled all day by the churches and neighbors to avoid the freezing pile up of ice coming. Plow came through the following night finally on one side of the street during the big freeze. Very little was gotten off the road and left as icy ruts leaving driving and walking treacherous. It was pretty obvious to me that waiting for 2-3 days was a very inefficiently handled plowing schedule. I can only assume they cut the numbers of trucks and drivers; because in the past, everything was cleared during the night for the morning shoveling.
I can’t speak to Saint Paul’s funding in particular, but based upon my own anecdotal knowledge of my neighborhood, I’d agree that cuts have decreased the effectiveness of the plowing each year. It has deteriorated over the last two years until the plowing on Christmas weekend looked, at best, incomplete. When the day plow routes were finally plowed, it looked like the plows had enough time to sweep straight through but not to finish off the job. As a result, slushy piles grew into every side street intersection and (predicatably) became icy ridges that still remain today and that will not vanish until almost April. These ruts and ridges will result in increased accidents, damage to car suspension and whhels (etc.) and a general decrease in the quality of driving and life in Saint Paul for two to three months. I don’t say this to complain about the actual work in my neighborhood, and I’m glad to cut the workers slack for having to plow on Christmas eve and Christmas day. I’m complaining because it LOOKS like the workers were on a time budget, that they were not permitted to clean up problems on that day or in subsequent days, and that these problems exist (and will continue to exist) all over the city. These are the facts that lead me to believe that there are indeed funding problems behind our plowing issues and that we’ve cut crucial funding that will result in nearly every resident being inconvenienced or damaged as a result. In Minnesota, plowing is absolutely crucial to the general welfare and should not be cut in such a political, short-sighted way.
It’s dangerous even for pedestrians–especially for pedestrians! Even if we don’t actually fall, we can twist joints in awkward and painful ways, as I already have. I don’t know how the elderly cope in these conditions!
It’s obviously a consiracy afoot, and the autobody shops (the only ones making out) are at the heart of it. Quick, someone check the governor’s contributor list.
“Quick, someone check the governor’s contributor list.”
You will find many contributions from companies that profit from global climate change. And that is a factor in unusual storms like this. So yes, we are suffering from increased storms like this while he is out of state somewhere running for President.