For an editorial board that’s constantly kvetching about government priorities, the Seattle Times certainly has an odd one:
It’s soul-searching time on snowstorm management. Seattle has unique challenges but also can do better by its citizens.
“Soul-searching time”…? Really? Over snow?
To put this in perspective, of the top 101 U.S. cities in average annual snowfall, Seattle ranks… well… Seattle comes nowhere near making the list, which bottoms out at about 45 inches a year, compared to our measly average of only 7.3 inches.
Only 7.3 inches. That’s less than half the annual snowfall in Olympia, less than an inch more on average than Portland, Oregon, 150 miles to the south, and about one-tenth the over 70 inches of snow that annually falls on Portland, Maine. My native Philadelphia averages over 20 inches, New York, 28, Chicago, 38 and Boston, 42. And the other Washington? About 22 inches.
Of course, these are just averages. Last year I’m not sure we had any significant accumulation, while forecasters predict this La Nina winter to be quite a bit whiter. But honestly, considering the more pressing issues facing our city, I have a hard time understanding the need for all this editorial soul-searching over something that inconveniences us for maybe two or three weeks out of every decade.
Besides… snow is beautiful, and it’s a pleasure to enjoy it without having to drive to the mountains. So chill out.
Goldy–
I’m with you on this one.
The Times needs to realize that Seattle is filled with Leftist Pinheaded KLOWNS incapable of any common sense…especially when driving with slick roads. The City could never do enough to prevent all the fender benders. Actually, keeping the streets impassable until it melts has probably SAVED accidents.
The icy road conditions this winter so far have been nothing like the snow and ice of two years ago. WTF are they complaining about?
Perhaps the educated, common-sense lacking fools of Seattle would be better served if they spent several billion to address this problem.
How about automated snow removal on all roads.\
That would make economic sense to the KLOWNS.
Money is no object, right?
There is an infinite supply available for every brainfart the Times cuts loose.
Cynical @3,
Or, we could spend the money building light rail, which operated just fine through the recent snow storm.
@4
Touche!
*******
Considering how rare big snows are and how broke we are, it might be best to announce that most snow removal, beyond making sure emergency vehicles can get around, will be done by warmer weather and the the sun.
See Cyn, I’m trying to save tax payers money! A couple years back I would have been all about the workers racking up some overtime.
Seems to be the “Something for Nothing” crowd. They demand services but are unwilling to pay for them.
In this case, demand world class snow and ice removal services for the 3 days we have had ice this year, but unwilling to raise taxes or cut budget anywhere else to pay for those gold plated services.
Well, it reminds me a bit of an old joke….
Farmer: “Congressman, we’ve got a terrible draught here, and the folks in Washington need to do something to help us out!”
Congressman: “Nonsense! I happen to know that our district got over 12 inches of rain last year!”
Farmer: “Yes, we did, and I remember well the night it happened”.
Our office has regular rotations of personnel from Japan, and being one of the local “old hands” I often have to educate them about what to expect in the Seattle area.
One of the things which continually baffles them is the frequent power outages due to windstorms, and the commuting difficulties due to snow. With several different mass transit systems in the greater Tokyo area, including trains, light rail, and monorail, they don’t expect any disruptions due to snow, and even minor deviations of the train schedule aren’t tolerated. They also don’t understand why we don’t simply bury our power lines so we won’t have power outages everytime the wind blows.
Side Note: Last time I was in Japan, I had to make a side trip, so I made sure I got instructions from my colleagues on the train routes. After making a transfer from one train line to another, they told me to take the 10:18 local train, but not the 10:12 train, which was an express. I asked them how I could tell the difference between the trains, since I don’t read Japanese very well. They looked puzzled at my question, and responded, as if explaining something simple to a small child: “Because one comes at 10:12, and the other at 10:18. If you see one at 10:12, don’t get on it. Wait for the 10:18 train.”
I was skeptical, given my experience with busses in Seattle, but they were exactly right – the express train come by at exactly 10:12, and the local train arrived precisely at 10:18.
It’s also pretty damn irritating when the city has it’s head up it’s ass and can’t keep streets driveable in the snow. The failure to use salt on the streets in the 2008 snow storm is Exhibit A. I’m sure there is a readily available Exhibit B that escapes me at the moment, so I’ll let others chime in.
Maybe we should simply require bought four-wheel drive cars as a matter of course, and made sure they carried chains and knew how to put them on their cars. My Dad was once on an extended business trip to Sweden, and told me how he watched in Sweden as parents took their teenagers to a frozen lake to teach them how to drive.
In the snowstorm two years ago, I couldn’t believe how many people got stuck who had chains in the trunk of their car, but were asking other people to put the chains on their cars for them. “Excuse me, I have chains but I don’t know how to use them. I saw you putting them on the other five cars, could you put them on for me?”
After pushing quite a few cars up the off-ramp from I-405, one lady angrily yelled at me “You guys really ought to do a better job of clearing the snow!” – and that after I had pushed her car up the hill! That baffled me for a moment, until I realized I was wearing my flight-line high-visability coat, which I always put on anytime I’m standing on the side of a road. I guess she thought I was DOT, and she wasn’t satisfied with the level of service I was providing. I’ll bet she also voted for Eyman’s tax cuts.
Blue John @ 6. You are so right it bears repeating.
-Seems to be the “Something for Nothing” crowd. They demand services but are unwilling to pay for them.-
I wonder what is different about our American Psyche, our Culture, that sloppiness and shoddiness is acceptable but not in their country? Seems anecdotally, that Japan is better at us in running their trains and building cars more precisely.
What is different about us, that we don’t do equally well.
Hey spendthrifts. Chains and snow tires damage roads. Are we really unable to slow our lives down for a couple of days?
# 9: The 2008 storms were an abberation, we get storms like that here about once a decade. I think the last big storm like that was in Dec. ’05 – Jan. ’06, I remember because it caused a delay in closing on my house.
Most of the time it snows and then is melted by the following day. There’s not much reason to buy a lot of additional equipment for such a minor event, or to make major changes in the way we do things.
The best way to keep the streets clear is to have metal-edged snowplows which can rip up the ice, and spread salt frequently. But this causes other problems. We would have to do away with the traffic turtles, those bumps which help us see the lane lines better in the rain. Of course, the reduced visibility would cause a lot of other problems the rest of the year, but if you want to solve a problem for snowstorms which arrive once a decade or so, that’s the price you have to pay.
And, of course, salting causes our cars to deteriorate a LOT faster, along with some other ecological damage. After all, who really needs a salmon or crab or clam industry around here, as long as we don’t get snowbound for a few days every ten years or so?
So maybe we should buy a lot of extra snow removal equipment, and hire crews who won’t do much until it snows once a decade, and pay for it by a local estate tax and a tax on newspaper operations. That should satisfy the folks over at Fairview Fannie.
Blue John,
I think you said it the first time. -Seems to be the “Something for Nothing” crowd.-
Efficient transport systems like that described above for Japan take lots of investment and commitment. In Japan public infrastructure and public-private projects are an effective form of nation building and the Japanese people believe in them and support them. Here public-private is seen by the private mostly as a means of parasitising the wealth of the nation. And we have one half of the political leadership actively trying to make sure public projects and services don’t function well in order to support their argument that public services can’t function well at all.
But it doesn’t matter because we are the free’est bestest people in the whole world, right?
@15. But it doesn’t matter because we are the free’est bestest people in the whole world, right?
Sadly yes. That’s one reason Reagan got elected. Carter told the truth. America had some hard choices to make, he didn’t give lip service to American Exceptionalism. America went into depression. Reagan came in, spun pretty lies that America was the bested, greatest, shiniest city on the hill (just put it on the credit card ) and made America feel good about itself again. Denial is a great thing.
And now we are where we are.
#5’s a lazy, good for nothin’, surrender monkey.
re @ 17
I want to state for the record that one of the few good things for america to come out of the Iraq war is the term “Cheese-eating surrender monkey.” It is genuinely hilarious.
Just sayin’.
The Dullard is my Republican alter-ego.
The character Bucky Kat, from the the comic Get Fuzzy, which I’m a big fan of, calls people surrender monkeys. I love the term.
Get Fuzzy is the only comic I actively seek out anymore, but I’m not totally sure why…
One solution would be to bury heating elements under the roadways which can be operated either by a switch or a thermastat. The problem is, you also have to heat the gutters and storm water systems, to keep the water from freezing again as soon as it exits the roadway, which would soon block the storm water drains and cause water to accumulate on the roadways.
But a number of cities and villages do this in Europe and Scandanavian countries. But they have central steam plants which pipe steam into radiators at every house, so the steam pipes go under the streets anyway. It works there because the villages are closely contained. As soon as you get away from the villages, you are driving on snow again.
It would be nice if all the whining piss ants who whine about every little fucking thing under the sun, including the “snow” “storms” we have twice a decade would just shut the fuck up already.
Loved this thread…
I live in the boonies, so I watch the urban snow nightmare from afar.
But we really depend on roads out here and my local public works guys (who work for me and get great benefits!) are awesome especially considering that they cover the entire county’s road network (vast).
With that said, roads and road maintenance should be defunded well before we cut what the least of us need.
Whining about snow removal when real people, through no fault of their own, are are facing life and death cuts is beyond evil.
Fuck the something for nothing crowd, let them eat gravel.
I found that when I lived in Boulder that I got used to the snow. I even took my driver’s licence the day after a blizzard in 4′ of fresh snow. At one point the officer says, “Take a right at the next intersection”. I couldn’t see where the intersection was so I refused. He didn’t knock any points off for that one. In fact, he commended me for playing it safe.
@23 “when real people, through no fault of their own, are are facing life and death cuts is beyond evil”
It’s hard for me to whine over some minor inconvenience like snow when I know the pain of what it’s like to be dirt poor and to have absolutely nothing. I recall our place in the housing projects being freezing cold when there was no coal and no money to buy any.
The Times is determined to elect Tim Burgess mayor in 2013, and to that end will say and do anything it can that might make McGinn look bad.
“People were pissed at Nickels two years ago about the snow! Maybe we can get them pissed at McGinn, too!” It’s just about that simple, and just about that nakedly juvenile.
I’d like to see McGinn come out for repealing the estate tax, just to watch Frank Blethen’s head explode.
It really comes down to priorities for spending. I lived in Lake Tahoe for a decade, and for all of the cities and counties involved, snowplowing was at a premium in the winter, and police security and fire safety in the summer. Given storms that would bring numerous feet of snow, the roads, even in the inner parts of the cities, were very well plowed all the time. Other city/county services, not so much. In the summer months, all you saw were city/county services.
Snow drama has got to be the least interesting, least important political issue in Seattle. What a waste of fucking time!
I live in Olympia and have driven to work in 8-9 inches of snow (most of it not removed from some main roads). That sure isn’t fun, but I grew up near Chicago so it isn’t like I don’t have skills to do it. It stuns me that so many people put studded tires on (which are completely illegal in the Midwest) or chains. However, chains around here might not be a bad idea given the degree to which people are totally on their own on ice/snow covered streets. The ice is, of course, the bigger problem.
It doesn’t help that it’s like a driver’s education video when it snows too. People drive down the middle of the street, there are bikes and cross country skiers competing for your lane, and then there is the combination of people barreling forward in a machismo sort of way as well as all sorts of slipping and sliding. It’s all very exciting.
I just hate the part where my car bumper has to be the defacto snow plow because they really don’t bother here except on a few of the main streets.
Goldy–
Since Global Warming turns out to be a bunch of leftist control nonsense..perhaps you are right.
Read this==
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sci.....ecord.html
If we truly are experiencing Global Warming, not much need to worry about snow in Seattle…or Light Rail Michael.
Michael–
When will you understand there is NO MONEY for more Light Rail. Your elected idiots pissed it all away planning, re=planning and re=re=planning. It all went to Bureaucrats and Consultants. Nothing left for building.
21. rhp6033 spews:
C’mon rhp, spare us the Yerapeein
Europe is broke too..’cept Germany.
Seattle ain’t a small village.
Hey, why not build about 10,000 roundabouts…just like Europe!
@29 and 30 – Dumber than a fucking stump and proud of it.
31
Cynny’s the dangerous kind of dumb–too damned dumb to recognize how dumb he is.
@32 Isn’t it past time we did something to save the Psycho-KLOWN’s poor, hapless goat from a fate worse than death?
@29…
Get stuffed you jerk…you don’t live here.
Stay out of our fucking biusiness.
33
Long past time–I lie awake at night wracking my brain trying to figure out how to rescue that poor, wretched creature. The reality is, however, we just don’t know where Cynny and his goat reside. I wonder if PETA could garner its resources to locate the sick bastard and then get a strike force together.
We, as a nation, have consistently failed to prepare. When we constantly prepare for war, we have made no preparations for peace. When we prepare ourselves for the hoarding of wealth, we have not prepared ourselves for poverty.
I think it would be prudent, considering the current state of Government, the totality of its corruption, and the support for its ineffectualness on the part of the right wing, to think about preparing ourselves for poverty. That doesn’t mean stocking up on weaponry, it means stocking up on personal survival skills.
July of 2008 was just the first turdstrike on the fan.
Froggy @ 36: “We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid.”
We have some damned hard working trolls who post here.
Great post. Americans cannot prepare for adversity because of the American exceptionalism nonsense that Reagan promoted and to which the Right blindly clings. They think that closing our eyes, plugging our ears, and humming loudly while jumping up and down is the best way to approach the future.
If the Times pontificators really believe Seattle should invest in snow removal equipment, they should put their boss’s money where their mouths are by offering to pay for it by reinstating the newspaper tax.
It’s not all bleak, Goldy. The Times editorial board at least has enough presence of mind* to criticize GOP Sen. McConnell for fiddling while Rome burns.
* Probably not the best choice of words, as McConnell plainly does not have a mind, but it’s the phrase that leaped into my fingertips as I typed this.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.c.....enate.html
@21
do you realize how much power that would take???
lets just say its not available.
less wastefull spending on public art and more spending on cops and snow removal equip.
34. Rujax! Reminding MISTER Cynical-ASS-Klown that the jesus threw pricks like him out of the Temple. spews:
@29…
Get stuffed you jerk…you don’t live here.
Stay out of our fucking biusiness.
Thats funny…those of us who own property in the rural areas keep telling you city types the same thing – yet you never listen.
@ 42
Thats because you so-called “country folk” all seem to want to stuff your property with 300 decrepit cars and dump your motor oil in the streams. Stack tires in the woods 30 feet high. Fill your back yards with 40 year old single-wide trailers and rent them out to meth factories.
Nobody cares what you do out there. But your property rights end at the property line. You don’t have the legal right to destroy property or environment that doesn’t belong to you. We cannot keep paving over our arable lands so some schnook can make a quick buck building overpriced houses or golf courses on it.
You property rights folks won’t stop unless forced to, in your efforts to turn forests and farmland into endless minimall strips, industrial parks, factories and parking lots. You want to turn the county lands into east Los Angeles.
Hell with that. I didn’t move out of the bay area so I could live in another giant, rotting metropolis.
@43
tough shit for you I guess…perhaps you should purchase 300 acres and then you can do with it what you want.
perhaps you should move back to AIDS City..I am sure they will welcome you back with a free six pack of lube.
@43
and the giant rotting metropolises of seattle and san fran are run by who???????????
you mean the progressives turned those places into giant rotting metropolises?
hmmmmmm…
44, 45
You are what is wrong with this country.
I didn’t live in San Francisco moron.
I lived in the south bay, a die hard right wing area. Many of the houses were built around WW2 when we actually manufactured things. When I was a kid, it was all peach, apricot, loquat trees.
Now, they call it silicon valley, and its paved over for ten thousand square miles. That farmland is gone. Now, all those old computer companies have moved to Texas, or India, or Indonesia, and the buildings stand empty and unusable. They rot and fall down and only are replaced with other similiar eyesores. It was just a 30 year flash in the pan.
And I haven’t seen a loquat in 25 years.
Personally, I’d rather see it returned to farmland. The soil was excellent, and the air was clean, and you could drive most anywhere without spending 3 hours sitting in traffic.
@46
well that is your opinion, now isnt it.
I find it funny that deathfrogg the progressive find two of the most progressive cities in the US as “giant rotting metropolises”.
can you tell me when conservatives or libertarians ran each of those cities?
I will wait while you research…..
@47
well I suppose if the population of this country was still at 200 million people, you could get what you wish for.
I guess I should conclude that you wish to stop all immigration now…and that is a whole nother conversation.
I don’t think I have ever made a favorable comment about the deep bore tunnel before, but it should perform well in a snowstorm.
@50
but what good is it if you cant get to the tunnel to use it?
And in response to Goldy’s article: Its very easy to say “just chill out” when you do not have a job to get to. Not everyone works from their home.
The blame on this fiasco is two-fold: city and state officials who still have not figured out how to deal with snow and ice, and NW drivers who are incapable of driving on anything accept bare and dry roads. I swear the drivers up here are the worst in the nation.
43. Deathfrogg spews:
Now Deathfrogg–
Don’t you think that is a big overexaggeration on your part? I would never do those things. Even if I did want to Mrs. C would never allow it. NONE of my neighbors do that. In fact no one in our area does that. Our streams are pristine and everyone values them because water is critical.
Now back to reality–
You KLOWNS appreciate the Arts…right?
Junk Cars are Yard Art!!
Remember beauty is in the eye of the beholder!
Dr Zaius–
Goldy’s NW Division of Lunatic Moonbats is incapable of adapting to difficult situations. Goldy’s mom still sends him plane tickets to visit for cryin’ out loud!
YLB sends his wife out to work while he sits unemployed for over 5 years whining about successful people.
BTW–
How do you KLOWNS feel about ImamObaMao caving in on the Bush Tax Cuts. (Gnashing teeth and wringing hands)
“40. Dr. Zaius spews:
@21
do you realize how much power that would take???
lets just say its not available.”
That’s the problem with typing on blogs. Nobody can see you chuckling as you discuss an alternative which is obviously not going to work.
It only works in some places because they have central steam plants which heat all the houses in the area, and the urban areas are tightly confined.
Of course, it has it’s merits, as Cynical seemed to blow a fuse at the mere thought of adopting a “European” solution. If sliced bread had been invented in Europe, Cynical and his fellow-thinkers would still be fighting against it here, arguing that Americans should darn well better slice their own bread!
@ 53
I could take you to several places, outside Bothell, Federal Way, Issaquah, Woodinville, Monroe, Maltby, Granite Falls, Snohomish etc etc etc, where there are HUGE Dino Rossi or Clint Didier signs, property rights advocating right wing signs and such, where the yards are full of old cars, tractor parts and old schoolbusses with blackberries ten feet deep around them.
Stacks of tires, 55-gallon drums full of who knows what, old barns that are leaning over at a 30 degree angle, old travel trailers. You name it. I spent a lot of time traveling around the area, going to private scrapyards looking for hard to find parts with my friends who like to restore and rod old cars. You’d be amazed at what is out there.
And every single one of those folks are die-hard “property rights” fanatics who could give a damn about those folks living down stream.
Deathfrogg-
If what you suspect these folks do on their own private property bothers you, why not just go knock on their doors and tell them to clean up their shitty mess?!
Do it.
You can change your name from Deathfrogg to
DEADfrogg!! Teh-hee
rhp-
Untrue.
I love French Fries! Ooops they were invented in America.
I suppose you like the most famous French phrase of all time—“I SURRENDER!”
I stand corrected. Bring on the overtime!
The French in French fries refers to the way they’re cut. The German in German chocolate refers to the last name of the guy credited for creating the recipe, he was an American too.
@55
Only the righties didn’t get it. They never do.
Not to get too far off-topic, but I participate in several historical discussion boards, and this is a subject which comes up from time-to-time.
If you try to make this statement there, you would get an earful from knowlegeable posters who would point out specific French units who sacrificed themselves to the last men holding back the Germans at Dunkirk so their British Allies could escape. Or the Frenchmen in impenetrable fortifications along the Maginot line who, after being bypassed by German armor far from their locations, were sealed up by German bulldozers, and didn’t emerge until their fate was discovered by accident months after the war ended. Or the valor of the French in WWI, fighting the Germans for four long years in conditions which the Americans experienced for only a few months.
Generalizations have a habit of coming back to bite you once the details are examined.
My sister explained to me her experience when they lived in Massachusets. The freeways there were maintained by each local entity through which it passed. Each had their own standards.
So as you drove down the freeway, you could hit a patch of clear, dry, and salted roadway, then unplowed roadway, then plowed and sanded roadway, then plowed roadway with nothing applied at all.
That must take some getting used to.
God Bless those French Units who sacrificed themselves.
But how about the French Government, always quick to raise the white flag.
You can always find exceptions to any statement rhp.
I have no use for the French Socialists who ruined France.
Since most of the Times Ed Board members reside out in the hill country and marshlands it’s no wonder they can’t keep their local gubmint agencies straight anymore.
SDOT did a darn fine job overall. They coordinated with Metro’s dispatch to prioritize ice removal where Metro directed them, and they started early and stayed ahead of the storm. Seattle residents who work in the city and who stayed off the interstates and state routes got home pretty well Monday and got in to work okay on Tuesday. Bus riders were screwed, but that one goes to King County. And the hill people depending on WSDOT were better off finding a motel. WSDOT’s crews were all either north or south of the metro areas.
“I have no use for the French Socialists who ruined France.”
Like DeGaulle?
@66 You’ll recall that our wingnuts believe that FDR was a traitor. They’re also feverishly scrubbing Thomas Jefferson from school books. Their eyes light up at the thought of dead Kennedys. So, yeah, I’m pretty sure that it can make perfect sense to a wingnut that DeGaulle was a surrender monkey.
@56
hey deathfagg, ever taken a drive to the central district or rainier beach areas?
gotta love that inner city lifestyle…that progressive voting lifestyle..
ya, thats the high life isnt it.
@ 68
Jesus, you really are a stupid motherfucker.
Go back to Stormfront asshole.