So you think Pittsburgh sucks at regional coordination? (Denver, Penn: 2015, credit)

[LIRefugee]

Originally Posted by Aqua Teen Carl

Seems that I stumbled into the Georgia forum.

It's on my mind.

[Mugatu]

This happens in Pittsburgh too, just to a much lesser degree. I remember a similar incident early last December, I think, where a winter storm started in the late morning and progressively got worse in the afternoon. So the employers sent everyone home early, causing big traffic jams and also prevented salt trucks from getting through resulting in 2 or 3 hour commutes for some people. I stayed at work until 6pm that day and all the roads were clear by then and I was home in 15 minutes.

I think this was the storm -- Drivers slosh through mess left by sleet and rain - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

I don't know why everyone feels the need to panic and leave early and hit the roads at the same time. Just wait it out and let the road crews do their jobs. Of course in Atlanta, they probably didn't have enough salt trucks anyway, so who knows if staggered departure times would have helped in that mess

[doo dah]

Originally Posted by lirefugee

it's on my mind.

a++!

[youngabe]

To be fair, it'd be like throwing a novice boxer into the ring with a pro. When the novice gets his/her ass kicked, you can't wonder why, because the novice is clearly less experienced. I don't think Atlanta drivers are really at fault--they deal with this once a year if they're lucky. You can't expect them to act like it's "just another day" when in reality, down there, it's far from it.

I do not agree, however, that they didn't have enough warning, etc. Shame on them for not heeding the National Weather Service's early warnings. They should know they can't handle winter conditions like a northern city, so, at the threat of winter weather, be safe versus sorry. This time, Atlanta was clearly sorry.

[BarqCider]

i get to hear from dc friends of how much snow they got.. i just silently laugh and said "i think we've been having snow every other day since mid November now. plus its been colder here than down there"then again... everything shutdown when it dropped to -10 for them (factoring in windchill)

[Katarina Witt]

Originally Posted by BarqCider

i get to hear from dc friends of how much snow they got.. i just silently laugh and said "i think we've been having snow every other day since mid November now. plus its been colder here than down there"then again... everything shutdown when it dropped to -10 for them (factoring in windchill)

LOL! OK, I'll bring it back to Pittsburgh. My brother (Moon Twp) was telling me about some day with a record low of -9 (or something like that). I had to laugh. We get days like that almost every winter, and they're not record lows, either. I thought, what a wuss!

[LIRefugee]

Who plows the streets of Pennsbury Village?

[DaBurgh]

There are various political, economic, regional, cultural and transportation reasons this happened and most likely will always happen in Atlanta. To simplify for people in the Burgh, here is something to read which will put it in "yinzer terms" (Copied and pasted from the ATL forum, post by red92s who gets the credit).

Originally Posted by red92s

Just some quick back of the napkin numbers for those lambasting GDOT for not having the highways in good shape.

285 is roughly a 60 mile loop, 6 lanes wide each direction. So we are talking something like 700 lane-miles that need to be maintained on 285 alone. A spreader truck can cover roughly 2 lane-miles before needing to reload. So you need something like 350 spreader truck loads to treat every lane on 285 one time. Even if there were 100 spreader trucks at GDOT's disposal (which there were not, by a long shot), you'd need every single one of them dedicated to 285 for most of the day just to keep that one highway passable.

Now throw 75, 85, 400, 20, 675, and 575 into the mix.

Philadelphia had over 350 pieces of snow removal equipment working during their last large storm, including over 100 that were private contractors. Their mayor caught heat for roads not being cleared fast enough.

Doubling, tripling, or quadrupling the amount of equipment out there wouldn't have solved anything. These trucks and equipment run about $100k each, so going from 100 to 200 isn't a trivial budget item. Pre-treating roads only does so much good. You have to be out there with the equipment as snow is accumulating to maximize it's effectiveness . . . which is damn near impossible when the entire hits the roads in a 90 minute stretch.

I totally sympathize and understand the need to vent after what some people went through. I'd want to scream and yell at anyone who would listen also. The need to blame someone is a bit out of control. News stations were already blame-baiting people yesterday AM at the news conferences. The gift of hindsight is a powerful thing. But, when you step back and look at the size and scale of the roads that need attention, the speed with which traffic deteriorated (making any equipment you've got useless), and the sheer volume of people on the roads at once, hopefully it's obvious that no amount of capital investment is going to prevent a occurrence.

Want an easy step to mitigate the next one? Make it a policy that when the NWS issues a winter storm adivsory, schools are cancelled. Not a recommendation, not a guideline, a policy. Take the guesswork out, which is what really hurt us this time around.

[erieguy]

Originally Posted by h_curtis

Not just snow removal. Road maintenance. Even if they rented the trucks and such from the city. The labor costs would be so much less and figure you could do the job with about 1/2 the crew, due to the massive waste factor. There can be collaborations. Just look at Rt. 28 construction. That is a massive job, but that crew actually works for a living.

Governments are just one big siphon of tax dollars. They are all the same from top to bottom. Aren't people tired of living like crap and paying tons in taxes? When does it end?

Nobody in their right mind is gonna bid on snow removal for 1 or 2 storms every couple years just like nobody is gonna rent out their equipment to people for that or other maintenance. You have plows to hook up, salt spreaders to install, loaders to put the salt in the trucks, etc..., and you think the city/government is just gonna let people use 100's of thousands of dollars worth of equipment. Not only is the risk huge but whose to say the people are gonna show up to actually do the job. You obviously have no idea of how much time and work is involved in getting the equipment ready and set up for the possibilty of a storm every year or 2. Again, no concept of reality.

Unfortunately, taxes are inevitable. Crying about them won't change them. Death and taxes are inevitable.

[Copanut]

Originally Posted by LIRefugee

Who plows the streets of Pennsbury Village?

The Boro of Pennsbury Village.