I sympathize, a little, but when the grocery store runs out of milk, bread, and eggs because the trucks can't reach it, I think I'll be sorry the roads aren't clear.
Road Conditions?
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i'd put the blame on all of the people who thought it was a good idea to continue life as usual today and drive in a single occupancy vehicle, not the condition of the roads. trucks won't have problems on this stuff, they're heavy enough. i suppose most people coming in from the burbs would assume that the city would do something about it, but can they really complain about the roads and still whine about the city wage taxes?
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According to the Post-Gazette
Mayor Luke Ravenstahl today held a press conference, updating the public on efforts to clear City roads.
ll Public Works Crews have been ordered to focus their efforts on plowing the City's secondary roads in a maximized effort to resolve access into all neighborhoods. As of 4 p.m., crews cleared roughly 50 percent of the City's secondary roads. At 10 a.m., that number was at roughly 15 percent.
"We're doing everything we can to get a handle on our roads in order to position ourselves for this next storm," Ravenstahl said. "Our goal is to have every secondary street touched by tomorrow's storm.
Puzzling to me - I've seen no signs of ANY secondary road being plowed and very little of primary roads.
Are they plowing back roads, instead of roads like 5th Ave? Nothing in Oakland appears plowed to me.
Bad things might happen when the snow starts falling tomorrow.
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@erok: ... can they really complain about the roads and still whine about the city wage taxes?
hahahahaha
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i saw them plowing secondary streets in my neighborhood this evening -finally. unfortunately, there's still several inches of snow left after the pass of the plow! this is going to be a mess for a while now.
does anyone have any information on why the city's response has been so horrible?
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As of last night, the city was running 80% of their plows (the other 20% was broken down and/or stuck). A plow came through Morningside last night, which was the first I've seen since Saturday. Most of my co-workers who live in the city are socked in worse that I am. I am slightly sympathetic to the city's plight, but I'm sure the DPW isn't the most efficient department.
jkoutrouba: I was at Whole Foods on Sunday, and there wasn't a single bike outside, but the store was packed.
I'm working from home again today....
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Condition report:
California from Brighton Heights to terminus at Brighton Rd is very bike-able, with two notable exceptions: a short stretch between the 65 overpass and the Woods Run bridge is iffy, and the stretch from the traffic light at Marshall to the post office is really, really dangerous (mashed potatoes evenly filling in over lots of icy truck ruts).
Of course, given current weather forecast, this probably will not be even remotely accurate for more than another couple of hours...
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hey erok, I'm going to have to differ with you. The trucks do have problems with this stuff. The city got a 4-ton dump truck stuck in the snow the other day. There was a tractor-trailer jacknifed on the parkway. One of my coworkers said that a city bus couldn't get up the "hill" on Oliver St downtown the other day. Heavy trucks have poor stopping distances on dry pavement, snow makes things much worse. Yeah, they can get through weather that people in Priuses can't, but eventually even the big dogs hit their limits.
But me? I skied through the park to Squirrel Hill and back today. All except for two blocks I had to walk -- which had clear sidewalks, except for the trip home after a city plow had cleared the street and filled in the sidewalk. Priorities.
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My son (20) rode about a mile of McKnight Road today, and 12A'd back. He reported that the predominant road surface was a continuous rut a foot or two wide, one for each car wheel, with a sheer cliff of ice maybe two to three inches high on either side. This was filled typically with slop, with a pool of water over the occasional manhole cover and potholes.
Hell, I'm not fond of McKnight on a dry day in July.
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@erok: yes, the blame rests squarely on those who decided to dig out their single occupancy vehicles and go get them stuck somewhere else while endangering everyone else in the process. Dumb people's overconfidence after 3 days of the snow not melting is the biggest danger to anyone right now. Just because it has been a few days does not mean the snow has actually melted or that driving has gotten any easier...
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Ummmm, I'd say the blame rests on the City for the road conditions at this point. I can't just pick up my groceries on my bike in this weather and currently I'm injured...so I have to use my car. I wouldn't be making such statements about "dumb people's overconfidence."
If there's anything dumb going on, it's the mentality of those driving + the City's incompetence, not the fact that people are driving. And honestly, for a city like Pittsburgh to look the way it does right now is ridiculous.
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I'd say the blame rests on the City for the road conditions at this point
I dunno...I think it may have had more to do with a near record-breaking storm. ;-)
It's not like the City/County/State plans for weather of this magnitude; or, to be more precise, it's not like any of the above would be capable of maintaining the amount of equipment, material, or manpower on call to handle something this far out of the ordinary, without spending a LOT of money which would be wasted in normal years.
Thought experiment: what could have been done differently, well in advance, that would have led to clear streets city-wide by, say, Sunday evening?
I'd say that this falls more under the heading of "shit happens" than "gross incompetence".
(And, as is evidenced by the debacle that is, say, Stanwix St, a large part of the problem comes about from people driving before the roads are reasonably clear, packing it into ice and making it almost impossible to plow up without destroying the street...)
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Salt? I'm still not sure why ELB is so clear, but Baum and Centre aren't...
And I suppose it was a lot of snow, but I thought that Pittsburgh would have been better able to handle it.
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Is DC in any better shape than Pittsburgh? I already had this discussion with people who cited amazing tales of how much better they deal with snow in <my home state>, but if you spend 10 seconds searching, you find people trotting out the same complaints regardless of where they live.
Pittsburgh Public Works clearly states their priorities as: (1) Public Safety, (2) Commerce, (3) Convenience. They have a limited budget, and I'm certainly not in favor of increasing that budget because some people feel inconvenienced by a massive and rare snowstorm. Yet, when people are asked to do a simple thing like staying off the roads so crews can do their jobs, they can't be bothered.
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I'm not sure where I fall on the outrage spectrum. From what I've read, other cities that were hit as hard (or harder) aren't doing much better than we are. It was a lot of snow.
That said, the city has never proven itself to be particularly wise or efficient, so I am not surprised. That the DPW would be able to elegantly and efficiently solve a graph problem like getting the city plowed strikes me as a stretch.
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CMU? Awesome, so long as they don't get anyone on the autonomous vehicle team involved. Robot snowplows just don't give me a warm fuzzy...
;-)In all seriousness, I'd love to see what they come up for routing algorithms.
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That's pretty funny considering the condition of the Forbes Ave. sidewalks on CMU campus this morning.
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I'm sure that the routing could be optimized, especially if you remove the "does a city official or one of their buddies live on this block?" criteria... but I'm not convinced it would result in more than a marginal improvement. How much time do the trucks spend in-transit vs actually plowing?
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I've been around Pittsburgh for a long time. My impression: we've had big storms before, but we haven't had the slow cleanup I'm seeing now.
It might be I'm mistaken about the amount of snow we had Friday or I might be misremebering the amount of time it took to clean up.
It just seems strange and unreasonable that Pitt would have to have a snow day on a Monday when the snow fell on Friday night. It was less than two feet of snowfall, wasn't it?
What could have been done differently?
I don't know about the city at large, but in Uptown/Oakland, they could have plowed Fifth and Forbes - early and often. I see no reason for 5 or 6 inches of mashed potatoes on top of ruts on Fifth two days after the snowfall.
I recall once in the distant past seeing four snowplows going down Fifth in a wedge that pushed the snow to the parking side. It's clear from the shape Fifth was in on Sunday that had not happened.
I think they could have managed one pass with a plow over all the city streets by Sunday night.
It was little cold for salt, yes, but I haven't seen any sand or gravel on the roads. They could have used some of that.
There are cities, Minneapolis, Chicago that get huge amounts of snow. I have not heard of Pittsburgh flying in the snow removal experts from those cities.
This morning, finally, a plow went down my street (or at least half the street) he cruised at roughly the speed cars go and took off maybe half an inch of the 4 inches of rutted, iced packed snow. If the other streets in the city were cleared, than I would look at it as one lazy or incompetent operator. One guy who got to the end of his rope, maybe.
As it is, I believe it is a management issue. When you have seriously overworked crews, you have to have managers making sure they do things right.
Ohter cites are having a rough time, too. I would expect DC to be shut down by the amount of snow we got here, but then, they don't get this kind of snow as often as we do.
To me, the city administration is not looking good on this one
Disclaimer: I lived in 150-inch+ territory when I was a kid. I don't expect Pittsburgh to do what they did, but still, maybe I'm expecting too much.
Mick
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Ok, risking the wrath of the public here, but I too lived in a much snowier environment before moving the Pgh. In the upper midwest, snow hit often, and often in the sort of depths that we are seeing this week. Yet the City almost NEVER shut down. And, with rare exceptions, all streets AND ALLEYS were plowed within 24 to 36 hours.
What is different between the two cities? On the side of the midwest -- more equipment. I hear that Pgh has 41 plows out today, and has borrowed/contracted with another 40 more. If accurate, that is simply too few for the job. I note that this is for the City only -- every one of the the 100 + other communities in the county also have snow equipment of their own. Some of this equipment is what is currently on loan to the City of Pgh.
Again on the side of the midwest, on call workers - my brother is a City employee in the Forestry department of the City I grew up in. As a CDL licensed driver for the City, he is on call a specified number of days a month for plowing. If they call, he has to go in and plow - or have a really good excuse. Those calls often come at 2 or 4 in the morning, to get the City ready for the morning commute. Sometimes they are out for a few hours, sometimes all day, sometimes for a very long day. It's a drag, but they get overtime pay, so it balances out (or so he says).
The upper midwest is also MUCH LESS tolerant of street parking, which makes a big difference. Most streets have one side of the street parking, which may change according to the day of the week. It means that plows can get through, and get through quickly. Cars that are illegally parked are removed. PERIOD. Occasionally cars are unable to be removed, and they get plowed in. Other routes are designated as "snow routes" and on street parking is simply prohibited.
Working against Pittsburgh is the temperature. In the upper midwest, it gets cold, and stays cold for most of the winter. A day in the 30's is a cause for celebration. As a result, the City can focus on either plowing or on salting. Today, on my street I watched a plow operator make three passes at the nearby intersection. Then he came down my street. He plowed for half a block, backed up half a block, raised the bed of the truck, salted half a block, lowered the bed of the truck, put down the plow blade, plowed my end of the street and then moved out of sight.
I'll be grateful for both the plowing and the salting tomorrow. But, it is a really slow way to do snow removal. Sometimes I am thankful I live in one of the "one square mile" communities in Allegheny County. It means that they do get to my street pretty quickly.
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Average snowfall here is 40" per year. We got over half that in one day, and it was also the 4th largest total on record. If you don't accept that as a significant amount of snow (not to mention the density of it, downed trees/wires, etc), the rest is just conjecture.
If we brought in "experts" from Minneapolis, no one would complain, right?
http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/messages/topic/2PD9vbZNIsMRzCXf2c7Eb3
Apparently MPLS can't afford all their plows anyway - they reduced the fleet from 134 to 80:
http://www.myfoxtwincities.com/dpp/money/Minneapolis-Cuts-Snow-Plowers-this-Winter-nov-11-2009
I think it's a complete overreaction, but of course the voters will be pandered to... hopefully they'll let people sit inside those shiny new unused snowplows next winter to make up for the libraries or parks or whatever else they had to shut down to come up with the money.
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Reddan:
I would understand some slowness in clearing the roads. But three days goes well beyond slow. I didn't see any reasonable effort to clear Fifth Avenue until Monday night, and that's a main route to hospitals and the second biggest employment center in Western PA. They should have been salting and plowing during the storm. They should have started plowing Fifth on Saturday.On the other hand, on Saturday and Monday during the day I saw plows out clearing several minor roads through Schenley Park, such as Overlook Drive and Circuit Drive (while the latter was still blocked by a downed tree).
Obviously the city has a lack of equipment working against it. But there were tons of pickup trucks with plows cruising the streets, clearing parking lots. The city could have contracted with those guys.
So: what the city should do is prioritize what streets it is going to clear and clear them, and contract with others if it lacks resources itself.
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Well, it sounds like the city is admitting that they kinda screwed up:
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On the other hand, on Saturday and Monday during the day I saw plows out clearing several minor roads through Schenley Park, such as Overlook Drive and Circuit Drive (while the latter was still blocked by a downed tree).
I saw plowing in Schenly on Saturday too. I wonder if this is a symptom of Balkanization of city govt. Citiparks has a crew based in Schenley, and they have plows, so they plow their park. It probably takes some kind of executive order from the mayor--which was slow in coming--to get them out of the park and onto streets. I don't know that this is the case, but it is what crossed my mind when I saw a plow in the park but Forbes had not been plowed Saturday.
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Also from walking to the busway from Sq. Hill this morning, I can tell you road conditions are pretty bad. Though if you are considering taking the bike out to ride in this, you probably aren't all that concerned about such reports.
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Interesting comment about the crew based in Schenley Park. Reminds me that plows have to come FROM somewhere. Some roads are beign plowed/salted early just because the PLOWS need to get access to/from their garages, fueling stations, etc. Those are likely to be in fairly out of the way places. Might be why parts of Schenley Park were plowed early -- to get the equipment onto the bigger streets.
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Here's the story from the Milwaukee paper this morning on snow clean up there:
The storm that over two days slowly and steadily covered the Milwaukee area with powdery snow a foot deep in some places will be followed by at least a couple days of slow and steady cleanup.
Persistent winds gusting to 25 mph on Wednesday will hinder a snow-clearing operation expected to cost roughly $1 million for the City of Milwaukee and ring up a steep tab for parking-challenged residents on the east side.
A city snow emergency went into effect about 8 p.m. Tuesday, with rules that prohibit parking overnight on arterials, bus lines and through-highways. Street parking also was off-limits in areas designated under the city's 4-inch snow rule, and the impound lot for towed vehicles on W. Lincoln Ave. was expected to be busy Wednesday.
Jeff Mantes, Milwaukee's public works commissioner, said salt trucks and garbage packers would clear city streets through much of Wednesday.
By Wednesday afternoon, Mantes said, he expects the crews will tackle residential streets, then turn their attention to clearing bus stops Wednesday night. Curb cuts and pedestrian walkways will be cleared Thursday.
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I look at it like this. When I grew up In Erie we had a snow blower and I wouldn't think about not having one there. In Pittsburgh my wife and I don't cause we don't get enough snow on a regular basis. The city doesn't have the need for an enormous fleet of snow plows.
As for what the city of Pgh was doing all day Sat and Sun is beyond me. Edgewood streets were passable by Sat at noon because they were up all night taking care of them. It's like Ravenstahl just threw up his hands and said "it's a snow day! No work!" and didn't bother mobilizing the snow removal teams until Monday when he realized just how bad it really was.
bjanaszek, Ravenstahl said he was going to do better this year and he failed.
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Gee, I'm not shocked.
Ryan, are your streets maintained by Swissvale? If so, I suspect they have fewer streets than the city. I'm not trying to excuse the oddness of the city's response, just pointing out a difference in the scale of the problem.
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Well, I guess at least next time someone tries to use the "bikes don't pay for the roads" argument, we can mention all the taxes we pay in the winter just so people don't have to suffer withdrawal from their car addiction for a few days...
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Not allowing parking on the streets would make it so much easier to clean up the snow. However, that strikes me as completely impractical in Pittsburgh. Even here in Squirrel Hill a lot of my neighbors have no place to put their cars but on the street. It's much worse in other nabes. Maybe they could do it during the day like the alternate side street sweeping--but right now there aren't a lot of extra spots available due to huge piles of snow.
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I tried to ride my mtn bike in on Monday and by the time I got to Braddock and Forbes I turned around. It was literally when I hit Pittsburgh that I was like, this isn't worth it.
I do realize the scale of Edgewood compared to Pittsburgh is a silly comparison, but their reactions were totally different it seems.
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@jeff: you are right--most of Mornigside would be hosed if people couldn't park on the streets. I could have parked in the alley behind my house, but on Saturday the contractor who plowed the VFW lot pushed all the snow into the alley.
As far as responses, when I worked in Allison Park, it was always interesting to see how the conditions on Mt. Royal Blvd changed over the course of four miles--it crosses several small townships, and I would go from wet pavement to several inches of snow in a matter of a few blocks.
I was just chatting with a friend, and he noted that even if we get a snowstorm like this every 15 years, the city needs to have a clearly defined plan for dealing with it. I mean, did anyone see the salt map? Primary roads weren't treated this weekend....
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Also, little lukey was partying at seven springs all weekend according to the post gazette
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A (non-sarcastic) question for anyone: is there a priority system in place for what gets plowed first? Since the start of 'Snowmageddon' I've been riding every day and Tuesday I rode a 36 mile loop from Carnegie-downtown-Brighton Heights-downtown-Carnegie and I was amazed by the disparity in what had been well plowed versus what hadn't been touched. I couldn't believe the shape of some of the prominent streets in the downtown and South Side Works area. I too grew up in heavy snow country (Minn, ND) so this doesn't faze me, what does freak me out is seeing all the people who still feel the need to TEXT while driving! Cheers to all my fellow riders and stay safe out there.
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I rode a 36 mile loop from Carnegie-downtown-Brighton Heights-downtown-Carnegie and I was amazed by the disparity in what had been well plowed versus what hadn't been touched.
Me too. Brighton Heights is a good case in point; the two main arteries (California and Brighton Rd) were in acceptable condition by Saturday evening, and were mostly clear by Sunday afternoon. Some of the main feeders between them (Termon, Benton) were, eh, iffy-but-usable...everything else lacked more than a single surface plowing until Monday, and many of the minor streets were still inches deep in slush as of yesterday afternoon.
That said, getting around up here and down to town has been fairly painless, both by bike and by car; whatever they did here should probably be a model for other areas.
Actually, come to think of it, I can see two reasons for the main street versus side street discrepancy; one is the simple choice of allocating limited plow resources mostly to the main roads. The other touches on the street parking problem; without physically hauling the snow away in dump trucks, there's simply no place to put it on these narrow side streets without literally burying every parked car.
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Thought: while I know that this snowstorm(s) are not normal for our region, it really brings forward the need (regardless) to have a more sustainable city / community. I mean, some coworkers are honestly stuck at home due to bad roads, but they live miles away, where they can only get back to society by car.... (just a thought).
I had my first 100% successful ride on my commute to work today, although is coming down again....
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I have co workers who have been without power since Friday. If their roads were clear, they could at least get out to go to a hotel, stay with friends, etc. But, some roads are still impassable there. (Maybe that's part of the reason that power is still out?)
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...it really brings forward the need (regardless) to have a more sustainable city / community
Or, at least to have services closer, or something. I was thinking that I'm lucky enough to have 4 grocery stores within a mile of my apt., so it only (only!) took two hours to drive from my apt. to two of them. Some people are going to live farther out no matter what. But at least to have the option to have your work, basic services, and a way to get there all nearby would be nice.
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88SM88 I rode a 36 mile loop from Carnegie-downtown-Brighton Heights-downtown-Carnegie and I was amazed by the disparity in what had been well plowed versus what hadn't been touched.
Reddan: Me too. Brighton Heights is a good case in point; the two main arteries (California and Brighton Rd) were in acceptable condition by Saturday evening, and were mostly clear by Sunday afternoon
Curious: Do these disparities work out to City of Pittsburgh vs non-City of Pittsburgh? I mean, other than main roads vs side roads.
That has been my impression from talking to others. I haven't left the city, myself.
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I don't know who was doing the actual plowing, but Brighton Heights is part of the City.
A friend who lives in Cranberry Township has been very pleased with their snow management. Apparently, they went state of emergency very early, so that they could hire outside contractors to pick up the plowing slack without going through the usual bureaucracy.
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A good friend lives in Murrysville, and he said it wasn't until later in the day on Sunday and early on Monday that his street got any real maintenance.
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An acquaintence wanted to know if Luke had a clown and pony at his out of town birthday celebration.
I do remember reading that the city began pretreating streets on Friday afternoon- but my guess is that only is good for a small amount of snow.
If I had shoveled my driveway this morning, it would not have made much difference at this point.
Same for plowing on Friday evening. I trust those in charge have some idea of what they are doing but are just a bit overwhelmed by volume. Perhaps they will learn something from this experience. -
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