Some simple post-blizzard math (figures taken directly from the Dept. of Streets and Sanitation’s web site):
– 274 dedicated “snow fighting trucks”
– 200 “quick hitch” equipped garbage trucks to aid in snow removal
– 9,456 “lane miles” to maintain in the city
Appreciable snow accumulation ended at noon on Feb. 2. In the 34 hours since that time, the side streets near my home (Rockwell and Leland) have yet to be visited by a single plow. The streets are impassable, and the individuals and businesses in my neighborhood are losing valuable time and money.
So here’s where the math comes in. Divide the 9,456 lane miles by 474 snow removal trucks (my alderman, Gene Schulter, assured his constituents in an e-mail update today that the city has deployed its full fleet of trucks) and you find that each truck is responsible for only 19.95 miles of roadway. Further divide those 19.95 miles by 34 hours since snow ended and we find that each truck only had to clear 0.59 miles of roadway in order for the entire city to be plowed by 7pm on Feb. 3.
I’m not naive enough to believe there are no challenges to this math, including re-supplying the trucks with fuel, salt, and fresh operators, as well as dealing with obstacles in the street (stranded cars, large drifts, etc.), but still, it’s been 34 hours since the snow ended and given the math above, I just cannot figure out why a plow has not made one single pass down our side streets simply to clear the bulk of the snow from the path of motorists who depend upon their vehicles to get to work and earn a living. Even if you cut the 34 hours in half to account for the time lost to extenuating circumstances, you still find that each truck only needs to clear 1.17 miles of roadway over the course of 17 hours for all of the 9,456 miles of streets to be cleared.
For a city familiar with snow, the cleanup for this storm is moving at a snail’s pace considering the figures provided on the Dept. of Street and Sanitation’s website. Where is the snow removal for the residents of the 47th Ward? Will we be stranded until spring?
— Evan Hourihan, Chicago
