With more than a foot of snow on the ground and "Snomageddon III: The Fury of a Groundhog Scorned" forecast for the weekend ahead, it's been interesting to try to get a handle on the story behind the badly plowed streets that make up the City of Richmond.
I've been more than a bit enamored this evening with the comments that have been accumulating on the Church Hill People's News site, prompted by a post that wondered why all the snowplows tooling around the city have their plows up.
As one of countless Richmond region residents who pulled on their boots and headed onto the streets for work this morning -- I actually pulled on a pair of shoes that had apparently split a seam, which is sad stuff when there is more than two inches of snow on the ground -- I spent far too much of the morning creeping down Cary Street from the Country Club of Virginia to the edge of downtown. Don't get me started about the return trip up Main Street...
The city's Department of Public Works went on the offensive late this morning with a press release picked up by local media that gave residents hope -- hope that five days after the snow actually stopped, their roads might be clear:
The Department of Public Works is making significant progress in the removal of approximately 11 inches of snow that blanketed the city just 48 hours ago. “The primary roads are about 60 percent complete,” said Director Dexter White. By Thursday White said he expects the majority of the roads to be clear of snow, though ice may continue to present a problem as temperatures dip during evening hours.
White said while the focus is to continue clearing primary and secondary roads, city crews and three contracting companies are also plowing residential roads. They are working through neighborhoods using the city’s solid waste collection routes. Solid waste collection has been delayed by one day to give crews a chance to plow the roads ahead of pick up schedules.
The city has been compared to neighboring counties with regard to snow removal. White said unlike those counties, Richmond is an urban setting made up of 5,500 lane miles, including the primary, secondary and residential roads. “We have more traffic, as well as on-street parking in areas such as The Fan and the Museum District, which makes it more challenging than plowing rural roads and highways.” In addition, he said the three major snowstorms that have pummeled Central Virginia since March 2009 have put a strain on the city’s aging fleet, which has resulted in the need for more repairs and maintenance throughout storm clean-up efforts.I'd like to think there are a couple of simple answers behind the snow removal disaster in Richmond.
The first is that the city always has been challenged in this department, and with good reason. For starters, it's not like we have predictable winter weather. And, as the press release notes, plowing in on-street parking districts sucks -- especially if you live in one of those districts where the snowplows apparently had their blades down. Nothing beats a two foot thick wall of frozen slush when you need to get your car to the office...
But I think the reality is probably pretty simple. The city dropped the ball, and you can't play catch-up with a snowstorm. By the time the plows were ready, most of the roads were three inches of frozen slush (that's how Laburnum and Hermitage appeared by late day Saturday), and it took today's warm-up to melt them enough to begin the process of clearing.
But the other side of the reality coin is one of simple customer service. Never mind the needs of the 200,000 residents of the city for a moment. The city has plenty of opportunities to do right by them (or annoy them more).
The city's other customers -- tens of thousands of professional workers and college students -- had one impression of the City of Richmond today. For many of them, it was a very real sense that their easy commute ended the moment they hit the city line. That's just bad service.
