Baltimore’s Snow Response
- February 12th, 2010
- Posted in Uncategorized
- By sycobuny
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This is mostly in response to this post by another Baltimore native, in addition to some conversation I’ve had with him since. The feelings I have simply could no longer be expressed in 140 characters or less, and I’m not a fan of the long-form multi-tweet thought.
I realize that Baltimore is not a city in the north or in the midwest; 3 feet of snow is not something that happens every winter. After all, we tend to get a nice “wintry mix” of about 3 inches of wet snow that melts the next day and it sends most people into a blind panic. Given that the entire city hasn’t collapsed into a swirling vortex of despair, I’d say we’re doing pretty well. But that doesn’t mean I don’t think we can do better.
Given that we got hit with two storms in quick succession, a good two feet followed a few days later by another foot or so, I realize that there’s much to be done. Streets that were formerly plowed now need to be gone over again, and in the middle of a city there’s not much place for all that snow to go. However, my street was visited by a plow about an hour or two before the first flakes of second storm. That’s fine, it helps keep the total amount to be plowed next time down. Of course, that’s assuming they actually plowed. After sitting at the end of my block for a good few minutes (I’d assume they were digging out, except they’d have to have been doing it by telekinesis), they trundled down our street, plowing about halfway before lifting the scoop up and continuing on out of our block.
It’s not a terrible thing to take a break, as I’m sure those guys had probably been driving around city streets for many hours. But, if you’re actually going to resume plowing, I’d appreciate it if you plowed the whole street, and not just a little bit. Sure, it’s a business at the end of the block and not houses, but we still need to drive there. Since that time, like much the rest of the street, there is now a nice patch of packed-in snow sitting on top of a sheet of ice. Very nice.
Again, they have a whole metric shitload of snow to move all around the city, and it’s not unreasonable to assume that a silly residential side-street will get less attention than the main thoroughfares. But I actually ventured out into the city in my car for the first time since Thursday today, and I was delayed a good few minutes by a snow removal crew. The street was fine; they were clearing parking spaces. For that, I wouldn’t fault them, because I know people have been complaining about parking spaces, snow removal routes, etc. However, they weren’t in front of houses, or even a heavy business district. They were clearing spots in front of a church, and a garage (access to the garage was already available). At this point, I’d say that maybe their time would be better spent clearing out the side streets.
I say that because, after eventually getting back to our house, I had to grab a shovel and spend 20 minutes trying to break up the ice in the center of the road so that we could have enough traction to actually park in our carefully-cleaned spot. As an aside, here’s a note to other Baltimore city-dwellers: we did not put a chair in our spot; that crap is tacky. We got lucky and got our spot back but were willing to grab a shovel and make another one if need be. We shoveled a patch of pavement; doesn’t mean we own it. Back to the topic: there’s definitely an issue with organization. Could I do it better? Probably not, but I didn’t run for a seat in the city government.
If it sounds like I’m ragging on the city too hard, it’s just a form of tough love: for someplace where the average annual snowfall is less than one of two storms that hit it in a week, it’s doing pretty well. Don’t just take a pat on the back, though: there’s still work to be done, and ways it can be better. And for city residents, it’s hard to refrain from being shrill, but many snow-removal crews have been working pretty damn hard to make up for a lack of preparation, so a little slack might not be out of order.
Even though this post was written in response to one I made on my blog, I agree with everything you’ve said here. The city needs to do a better job of prioritizing what needs to be done in what order, and too many residential streets have been in need of attention for too long.
On the other hand…this is not new. Even if we work with the understanding that Baltimore is not equipped to deal with the amount of snow it’s received this season (and realistically can’t justify the cost of what it would take to do the job well), our city government has a history of doing an awful job of handling the task. Even as recently as Saturday, January 23rd, when Baltimore received its second big snowstorm of the season, DPW trucks were nowhere to be seen until the storm has already paralyzed the city…and even then, they were too few and doing too little.
Now, here’s what’s different about the storms we got over the past week: The city tried a lot harder, and things were handled a little better. Did they do a good job? NO. Is there room for improvement? YES. But was there improvement? YES.
By no means do I think newly-sworn-in Stephanie Rawlings-Blake deserves a trophy and a trip to Disneyland for a job well done, but her administration sure as heck handled it better than any similar circumstance under her predecessor, Sheila Dixon. Confusingly, though, I’ve heard more anger over this storm than over any storm we had under Dixon. Seriously, did people forget how bad things have always been? Did they expect a perfect performance from a city government who’s only change was a rookie mayor who was sworn in barely 24 hours before her first major snowstorm?
People need to understand that governmental change is slow and gradual. It will probably be years before this city learns the best way to handle a crisis like this one. In the meantime, the best thing to do is to exercise some patience and stay on our leaders to continue the improvement they’ve only just begun to affect. People who are exhibiting nchecked, near-riotous anger–which I have seen from more than a few people–are only encouraging leaders to tune them out, not hear their voices.
I’ll admit I did a bit too much rambling and not enough real justification for anything I was saying. But then, that’s what a lot of the complaints are: just gut feelings with no real rhyme or reason to them.
Yes, the response has been pretty good for a city ill-equipped to deal with it. Yes, it could still be better. But for people who are excoriating the newly-minted Mayor for this, shame on them, because it isn’t exactly all her fault. It’s like people who would say of Obama’s performance on January 21st, 2009: “Why isn’t the economy all better now?” I don’t think I’ve had need of doing my laundry once since she’s been sworn in, so I don’t expect her to swoop in and save the city from a snow-storm with badly-outmatched equipment and personnel. Sure, she needs to get with her planners and say, “hey guys, Pratt Street is a major artery, let’s not clog that up during rush hour. Let’s focus that time on people who still can’t get out of their streets.” But that’s something that may only be obvious in hindsight, at least when there’s a whole city to deal with.
These aren’t excuses, only reasons, but they are still concerns to be addressed. Given the relative rarity of this sort of situation here, I expect it won’t be a frequent issue. But Baltimore would still do well to learn that DPW trucks can’t wait until the streets are invisible beneath a layer of snow, slush, or ice before making their presence known.
The problem is that these streets shouldn’t have even had people on them. Maryland declared a State of Emergency and asked for federal assistance and, within Baltimore City limits, no one except emergency personnel were to be on the streets with vehicles. I don’t care if you’re Senior Vice President of Heroin Marketing downtown, driving was against the fucking law. You know why? So they could plow the fucking streets without your god damn stupid ass getting in the fucking way. What did you do? Drive anyway and complain about the plows being in your way. Genius.
I think it boils down to a couple of facts. The first and foremost being that absolutely not a single resident of this state can properly operate a motor vehicle.
Having been in the snow storm that hit back in December (while on my way out of the state, which took six hours) I witnessed people continuing to fly along a totally-snow-covered I-70 at 70mph without blinking. After they spun out and got stuck I’d offer help and they’d shun me for a cell phone. The fact of the matter is that people in this state are just god damn rude and don’t give a royal flying fuck about anyone but themselves. Blizzard? White out? Who cares! I’m walking across the street to the liquor store even though morons going 50 can’t see two feet in front of them.
I live just inside the city limits. I haven’t seen a single plow in two weeks. The main streets in my area have one lane open, and you’re damned lucky if it’s not a two-way lane, because no one’s going to stop and let you through. I happened to drive past a set of police standing around dealing with an accident while, ten feet away, a major intersection had the traffic lights flashing red which, in this state, apparently means “go as fast as you fucking can.” I had to honk my way through it while getting yelled at and flipped off. Apparently anything other than an entirely functional traffic signal means “never stop” in this god-forsaken state. The cops stared at me like I was crazy when I said “hey, why don’t you go direct traffic so you don’t have any more accidents”? The mind boggles.
I’m from a particularly nasty spot of the country in terms of weather. This was a lot of snow, even by St. Louis standards, but in St. Louis this shit would never have accumulated like this. The streets would have been covered in salt before the first flake ever fell, and when it started building up there would have been a plow in every single lane just waiting to go at it. The problem is that Maryland just sat around while it snowed, and then tried to deal with the problem rather than prevent the problem in the first place.
You may not be able to control how much it snows, but you sure as hell can control what happens when it hits the ground.
Also, what up with the chair shit? That’s retarded. I don’t put a chair in my spot but if someone took it I’m pretty sure I could just slide their car away. I spent two hours shovelling that spot out and it hurt me, a lot. The other people are just fucking lazy; I’m disabled.