Now can we get Gridlock Greg out of the Mayor's Office

Having grown up in Cleveland, there is one major difference between Clevelanders and Seattleites when snow hits. In the snowbelt, people feel they are personally responsible for snow clearance on and around their own property. The day after a snowfall, you see gangs of employees (usually led by white shirt and tie-wearing bosses) armed with shovels clearing steps, sidewalks, entrances, and parking lots. Heck, they even clear the street in front of their storefront so customers can drive up to the curb. Many homeowners and even apartment dwellers do the same for their sidewalks, front stoops, and driveways. In Seattle, I spotted exactly one such work gang (clearing an employee parking lot at a car dealership). Or two, if you count the prisoners who did such a nice job shoveling the sidewalks outside the KC Courthouse.

From what I've seen, there are hundreds of Metro and city Transportation Department staffers who are working very hard. But communicating real-world conditions to the commuting and shopping public has been abysmal.
Example: At 1:15 p.m. Tuesday the Seattle Transportation department, in a news release, announced it had "cleared primary arterials to exposed pavement." This is not even remotely true. I live within blocks of four primary arterials, as identified on the department's own map, and had just driven on two of them (Roosevelt Way N.E. and N.E. Northgate Way. They were rutted, icy and dangerous. They were not, and are not, in any way cleared to exposed pavement. Example: Metro. For almost a week now catching a bus between downtown and North Seattle has been a losing lottery. Metro assures us that our normal route is operating on its regular schedule - not the case - and advises that our alternative route is operating on an unpublished route. What good is that?? It's been taking 90 minutes to commute 7 and a half miles. This is simply unacceptable.

We stayed in downtown Seattle Monday night, as we had an early morning flight to NYC via Newark (thankfully not via Alaska Airlines, who didn't run out of salt, but were lacking in de-icer). The roads in the heart of the city were absolutely ridiculous. I felt like I was up in some lumber camp in Alaska! When our cab took us from Newark into Manhattan Tuesday evening, there was snow everywhere -- but piled up on the sides of the roads. NOT down the main city streets. Also, I was really disgusted with Seattle's sidewalks in the retail core that were pure snow/ice. Where is that collaborative work ethic that J.R. mentioned above? Well, I guess when the big guy doesn't give a snowflake about clearing the roads, why should the elves do their part? Seattle is a very silly town at times.

Excuse me? I thought Puget Sound was salty already. More wont hurt will it? A case could be made for Lake Washington I suppose but the year around pollution is is probably as bad. I know where I live out in the "country" the roads are bad and worse on side roads. Of course it does just keep snowing. There was a good novel several years ago on the planet going ice age instead of warming up. Sounds good this week.

There is another twist to Seattle habits. If you live in the Midwest, the primary sound the day after a snowstorm is the scrape of shovels as the citizens all go out and shovel the sidewalks in front of their homes. Out here the citizens just let the snow sit and slowly melt away. Count the number of shoveled walks on any residential block -- one or two, usually shoveled by some refugee from Minneapolis or Milwaukee. What it means, I think, is that we simply trust in the mildness of our climate. We know that it will warm up, that the stuff will melt away if we just hold our breaths. And it does. The belief holds true for businesses. too. And streets. I drove down Roosevelt yesterday and never encountered before such a hugely rutted bouncing jalopy ride. The trouble, I think, is that every now and then, rarely, winter comes to stay for a while, and we are hoist on our own petards. Yes, it is the old patented Petard Auto-Hoist in action.

P.S. I got a good laugh at seeing the Mayor's grade of B for the city's snow removal. In Minneapolis he would be ridden out of town tarred and feathered on a rail, or bouncing along in a handbasket to....

Here's a statistic I'd like to see: How many emergency vehicles (ambulance, police, fire) were prevented, or seriously delayed, from getting to where they needed to go because of road conditions?

Any sick people who got sicker or died? Calls for police help that went unanswered such that, say, a domestic violence situation wasn't diffused? A small fire that, for want of a judiciously applied hose, flamed into a house-consuming conflagration?

Or did Mayor Quarters declare Seattle an accident and disease-free, crime-free, fire-free city for the duration of the time snow lay upon the ground in the same way he magically wands guns out of city parks by declaring them gun-free zones?

Writing from unincorporated King County, Seattle...you get the government you want and deserve.

The Piper

Property owners failed to clear their side-walks and contributed greatly to difficulties in getting around. Many people simply opted to walk, as was generally recommended by both authorities and the media. Overwhelmingly, drive-ways and parked cars were dug-out, while side-walks simply ignored. Things seemed to have worked out as well as one should expect.

To Lisa, Joel, and the rest of the snow-obsessed Seattle media -

A few weeks after the snow has melted, none of you will write another word about this. Like everyone else in the city, the whole thing will become a distant memory, and no one will want to discuss sand, salt, and plows, let alone spend any money on them.

"Writing from unincorporated King County, Seattle...you get the government you want and deserve."

Thanks, Scott, you've shown all of us that our decision to live in a diverse cosmopolitan city was a big mistake. We'd all be so much happier living the middle of nowhere like you.

Well, one thing this record snowstorm did that our mayor and city council have not been able to do: it got the people "out of their cars"!

But seriously, here are three sensible things that should be done to prevent shutting down the city in the future:

1. We absolutely do not need salt on our roads. Ever see what cars and highway infrastructure look like in the midwest winter utopia the author writes about? Rusting hulks full of holes - holes in the quarter panels, holes in the floorboards, ugly corroding guardrails - we don't need that. Other western states manage to clear their snow and ice off roads using other, less corrosive means and we should follow their example.

2. We don't need roads, we need public transit, right? Sound transit, right? Baloney. We need to rethink the tons of millions of taxpayer dollars we are wasting, and have wasted, on slow-moving street cars (which is essentially what Sound Transit consists of, other than the Sounder train) which nobody except current bus users are going to use, and reexamine the sensible, less costly and much faster-moving alternative - monorail. A monorail system would cost much less, be unhampered by periodic record snowfalls, and, it would actually "get people out of their cars" because it could be built in a way to make it a faster way to get around, something buses and Sound Transit will never be able to do.

3. Fire the entire staff of the DOT and city street departments for their ineptness and incompetence which was made glaringly evident during this week's snowstorms. Despite multiple passes on some streets by snowplows, the snowpack and ice remained on the streets. Why? Because the plows were not weighted, which means they floated on top of the snowpack, instead of being able to dig down to the pavement and scrape off that hard snow - which just made driving conditions worse - craters and huge bumps on city arterials slowed what trafic there was to a 5 mph crawl. We need competent experts in charge who know how to operate and work on heavy-equipment and can get 'er done, not white-collar bureaucrats calling the shots.

So the U.W. shut down for 2 days, and that supposedly has some major economic impact on Seattle? Is it not possible that those 2 days will be made up, say during the spring break, or some other scheduled days off when the U.W. will now be open, as they do with most grade and high schools in our area when now forces closures for a few days in the winter?

Or is there some rule that "snow days" at the U.W. can not be made up?

An event like this happens around every 20 years. So, for one week it was difficult for people to get around. So what?

I have read stories that emergency roooms and hospitals are seeing many more injuries than normal, thus suggesting that people did, indeed, find it possible to make their way to hospitals and doctors offices during this weather event. I have not read one story indicating otherwise. Is it really necessary to make stuff up to try to alarm people?

Nobody who I know personally has suffered any major problems during this snow event. It was an inconvenience. Get over it. Stop whining.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081226/ap_on_re_us/winter_weather

"Slippery roads and cold have been blamed for seven deaths this week in Wisconsin; five in Ohio; four each in Indiana, Kentucky and Missouri; two in Kansas, two in Michigan, and one apiece in Illinois, Oklahoma, Iowa, Massachusetts and West Virginia."

You think Seattle is the only place where roads get bad in snow storms? At least the AP is not reporting any deaths related to our snow event so far.

The City response to handling the snow was absolutely ridiculous. It caused thousands of us to miss valuable days of work during an economic crisis. It left streets in an extremely dangerous condition. Pathetic.

This region is ruled by lunatics who have falsely valued the life of a fish over that of a human. The really, really scary part is that we normals have allowed control to slip away. It's time to stop this lunacy by wresting control out of their Gore-Tex sheathed hands. We need a new kind of NIMBY, the kind that says let reason prevail and humans get priority.

What we need in this city are more people who don't think the most important thing in the world is money.

I guess Al Gore fixed the global warming problem. Good work, Al!

Salt, no salt... Not the big issue. Streets that claimed to be clear that were not plowed well, left to re-freeze as rutted skating rinks were a major issue. I can live with only arterials first... but Actually CLEARING them would be a good start.

The other issue: Metro needs to do a better job of communication with it's riders and it's drivers. No word of cancelled routes, or word AFTER the fact. Informational phone lines that keep you listening on line for 4 minutes, THEN hang up. Web sites that are not accurate.

Friday, Dec 26, I was dropped off at 15th and Roosevelt by the "Snow Route" 71... We were told to walk up a half block and wait for the "shuttle" up to 35th. I watched as 5 other 71 short route drivers did the same thing. more than 70 of us over the next 3 hours. No Shuttle. No word. NO getting through on the phone lines. And every driver said the same... shuttle is comming. Most of us walked home, but not before we flagged down chained up cars to give rides to many of the elderly who sat with us in the freezing cold after being told to wait.

And we watched a Metro Supervisor drive by with NOT A WORD to the 70 of us.

And a Maintainence truck did the same.

Those elderly could have froze to death at METRO instruction.

This morning... an hour and 20 minutes before my 64 came by. The driver informed me that Metro is on "Holiday" schedule all this week. Thanks for the update metro. I tried calling 5 times, and after listening to the automated minute and a half message each time, on the last time finally got a human who then informed me of the holiday schedule.

No word of that in Sunday's papers, or newscasts (I watched 4 different ones trying to figure out todays weather...) I thank you for making me JUST 90 minutes late for work by letting all of us know AFTERWARD that you decided to run a holiday schedule.

I can deal with waits, or walking, if told whats up. Its the LACK of information in a timely fashion that is the issue.

To those that are complaining about the inadequate snow response I have a question: What do you think should be done? In order for Seattle to clear up quickly after a 20 year storm we would have to have hundreds of plows on standby, salt stores, committees of bureaucrats devising response plans, etc. In most years this would all be money poured down a sinkhole. Given the frequency of heavy snow combined with extended subfreezing temperatures the practical solution is to do nothing. When the freak storm does occur we can just stay home and bitch about it, the same as we did this time. In the long run it costs less and provides some entertainment value.

To prevent missing two days of work every twenty years you would have us dump so much extra poison into the Sound that we risk losing "the nation's largest marine and fisheries sector (fisheries exports from Washington State exceed the total of all other US states combined based on both value and weight)."?

Admitting that we are already polluting the Sound is no excuse to push it over the brink with extra salt and de-icers. That you would make such a short-sighted proposition makes a more profound statement about your capacity for critical thinking than it does about the situation at hand.

Chicago and St. Louis have the good fortune of being able to flush their runoff down the Mississippi (Chicago through it's man-made "sanitary" canal). Their poisons become someone else's problems. In Seattle, we do not have that luxury.

My advice? When you're in Seattle and snowed- in on those two days every twenty years, skip work and go make snowmen. I hear they do that in the Midwest too.

The link sourcing my quote about the fisheries was stripped in my previous post:
http://www.seattle.gov/oir/datasheet/economy.htm