Discussion for article #245092
Why, simple answer, expectation.
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dc was hit with ice storm b4 snowfall. lots of snow on top of ice is bad boogie.
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In Eastern Washington there is always debate over which city handles a storm the best. My little Republican Whitopia of Spokane Valley does pretty good, whereas the socialist Spokane has more issues.
Just like in this story, the reality tends to be complicated. Spokane Valley has fewer hills, curves, parks and trees. We are basically a giant parking lot. Spokane is a hilly curvy mess.
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DC also has lots of hills, some steep ones. And you have four jurisdictions (DC, MD, VA, Feds) which makes coordination a clusterfuck. Then add in an international and diplomatic community often from arid places driving for the first time in snow.
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Having worked in NC with a lot of transplants from up north, I’ve heard this a lot. Once they have lived down here a while the finally realize how seldom this happens, that a lot of equipment and materials to combat it would just sit around unused most to the time, and most importantly, a few extra days off work every few years to play with the kids in the snow is nice and that there will be more than enough time later to work.
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Furshlugginer New York values, that’s why!
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Living down south most of my life I always hear transplants from up north say this about southerners not knowing how to drive in snow. The really honest ones admit the first snow up north also sees a lot “experienced” northerners having a lot of accidents as many have to relearn each first snow of the year!
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Being from the land of the huge snow pile Minnesota, we learned sometime ago that when it snows you have to remove it from the streets and roads, not from the people who live on them.
Spending per capita will not give any insight into how fast the snow will be removed. The number of miles of roadway and the spending per mile are measures that will provide a reasonable comparison of the removal efforts of two different locations.
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That’s the most important thing. Equipment sitting idly is never good, it needs to be running, etc. And it costs money to maintain and routinely service equipment. To do that for equipment that seldom gets used is very wasteful. Makes no sense.
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DC -------Dysfunctional City… where nothing gets done.
It’s always like that in DC. I grew up in and around Washington and an inch of snow always brings it to a standstill.
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Also, NYC is built around the subways, and not roadways.
The subways never stopped running completely (although outdoor subways came to a halt during the peak of the storm on saturday).
The greatest issues caused by snow affect motorists and suburbia dwellers, which describes more of DC than it does NYC.
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Wow, you mean the city that deals with snow a lot more often and got hit about half as hard by this storm is doing better with uncovering roads. I’m shocked, just shocked.
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People tend to forget for all intents and purposes. DC is a SOUTHERN city. It might like to think of itself as a cosmopolitan city like NYC, but its not. NYC has much more experience in snow removal because they do it more often. Also, DC has always been plagued by patronage and cronyism (Mayor Barry comes to mind). Be "nice " to the right people and you get your streets plowed first
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Sitting looking out on my unplowed street in Arlington, Virginia.
One major factor to me is the fact that much of NYC is high rise and densely populated. I lived on 1st Ave in the Upper East Side for two years. When it snowed, three plows would plow their way up 1st. Didn’t take long!
Not quite so simple in the metro DC area. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Queens is still not up and running to the same extent as the rest of the city. It’s more “suburban” than much of the rest of the city and is much more like the DC area than Manhattan is. Tellingly, Baltimore and Philadelphia are also having a hard time digging out from two feet of snow, so it’s not just DC.
And as for the “DC can’t handle an inch of snow” canard. Time to give that one a rest. In the past, I’ve turned on the tv after four or five inches of snow overnight, expecting the govt to have shut down. Nope - two hours unscheduled leave…
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Huh? The capital of the United States, with all its embassies, think tanks, foreign visitors, etc etc isn’t “cosmopolitan”? Most people who live in my neighborhood in Arlington don’t come from here - they’re from Seattle, Maine, Philly, etc. I think they’d chuckle if you told them we were not “cosmopolitan”…
Also, the “Washington metropolitan area” is much more than just DC. DC has around 600,000 residents, while there are another 4 million or so of us in Arlington, Alexandria, Fairfax County, Bethesda, PG County etc.
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Money:
Each spends about $9 per capita on snow removal: The District of Columbia government sets aside $6.2 million a year for its 658,000 people, while New York’s snow budget is $77.5 million for its population of 8.4 million. The Big Apple’s snow budget and population are each about 12 times bigger.
Size:
The capital covers 68 square miles, a fourth of New York’s 302 square miles. The District has 4,400 lane miles to clear, budgeting $1,400 per mile. New York has to clear 19,000 lane miles and budgets $4,000 per mile, almost three times as much.
So New York has 12 times the budget to work with to cover only three times the area? That’s spending about 4 times as much on the same area at the same cost per capita due to New York’s greater population density. Given that it hardly seems surprising that they are able to deal with the snow quicker. Heck, it would be more troubling if they couldn’t deal with it faster.
Edit:Misread the size bit a little, looks like it is about 4 times the size and budgets three times to the same area, but the rest stands.
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Remind me why the subway system in DC, almost all of which is underground mostly, was shut down? That’s honestly idiotic. The whole point of a subway system is to get out of the weather.
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. . . According to an analysis by Moody’s, the Washington Metro area lost $570 million due to the storm through Monday, . . .
I hate factoids like this. In most cases, whatever time or money that was “lost” is made up in the next few days. If you are selling things or services, likely as not those things and services will be purchased once people are back into their “normal” schedules.
I suppose the major except to this is the airlines, but those idiots were cancelling flights 12-hours before the snow began to fall. Planes can take off and land in snow as long as it isn’t accompanied by strong winds - just ask Chicago, Denver, SLC, Jackson, WY, etc., etc.
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