How Not To Handle Snow

We had our first snow fall of the season last night and boy it was a big one. Fortunately, we missed the brunt of this storm. We were forecasted for up to 12 inches of snow but we only received about 4 or 5 inches of snow in our city area. By morning the snow had stopped, the clouds were gone and a clear, crisp winter morning greeted everybody. Coming out of my house this morning, I found our street almost cleared and the city plows working carefully on the secondary streets in my neighborhood.

When I got to work this morning in the downtown business district, I noticed a different method of snow removal. I have seen this technique they use in many areas around the country and if you sit down and think about the process and the available options for snow removal in this area, this technique makes sense.

Instead of plowing the snow to the sides of the streets, as it is done in all the residential neighborhoods; our city plows the snow in the downtown business district to the center of the street, making a wall of snow down the middle of the road, and then scooping the wall of snow up and depositing the snow in huge mounds strategically placed in the middle of downtown intersections. This snow removal not only clears the street and the parking areas in front of the businesses, but it also cleans some of the sidewalks. If done correctly there is enough room for vehicle traffic to travel around these snow mountains so that customers can park and visit the downtown businesses. While these mounds of snow are being built, dump trucks are stopping by to pickup a new load of snow which will be hauled to some nearby open field where the snow is dumped until the snow melts naturally.

Local businesses need to remove the snow in front of their business like anybody else. Except, in the downtown area they have no place to shovel this snow to. They have no front yards or open areas to pile the snow. In the front of their businesses they have a sidewalk and street parking spaces, and nothing else. But the snow needs to go someplace. So, it is plowed away and piled to be moved elsewhere by city crews.

Our little city does there snow removal a little differently that others. Once the snow is piled and scooped into these large mountains in the middle of key intersections, the mounts of snow sit there, sometimes for days, before the snow is hauled away. In the mean time vehicle traffic has to negotiate around these Snow Mountains while trying not to run up on the curbs and hoping no vehicle has decided to go around the mount in the opposite direction.

I walked around our square at lunch time to try to gauge the snow removal process. Most of the mounds were already created as I got to work. At lunch time I found no evidence of any snow mound being scooped and trucked off. What I did find was several people climbing up to the top of these mini-mountains to have their picture taken. I also saw several vehicles jump the curbs as they avoided these mountains of snow.

I give the city credit for quickly clearing the streets throughout the city. But for the final snow removal in the downtown area, I give the city poor marks. For the next few days as kids and spectators climb these mounts, and vehicles pass too close to these mounts as they travel around this newly created traffic circles, these piles start to fall apart spreading snow across the travel lanes only to be trampled on and driven over which will quickly create an icy condition on the road surface around the mount.

I say to the city, to paraphrase the saying from a national makeover show, "Move That Snow!" And move it fast.