Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Oh snow you didn't

Oh snow you did!

So far, the state and county road crews have done a great job getting the roads cleaned up, all things considered. But it sounds like the road situation will deteriorate:

The governor told reporters today that unlike the weekend storm where state highway crews were able to clear the interstates and major highways to bare pavement, crews will only make interstates and major roads passable.

He says highway crews cannot put snow on the shoulders of the interstates, because they are already covered with two feet of snow from the weekend storm.

3 comments:

Dave W said...

Just about every road I had to travel in the past few days around Columbia was cleared as well as could be expected except for Broken Land Parkway. I don't know why Broken Land Parkway was in such bad shape even as late as this morning where a normally three-lane stretch of road was only one lane wide in the most inconvenient spots possible. but otherwise, I can't complain about the remaining state and county roads in Columbia from my standpoint.

Freemarket said...

Yeah, I'm not sure what was up with Broken Land Pkwy but I noticed the exact same thing near the mall. There are also some two lane roads that are down to one lane in places. I have a pretty low expectation of good service from all levels of government, so even with these hiccups I consider the snow removal effort a wild success.

PZGURU said...

I have to disagree with you on this one FM. Howard County may have done a good job on their roads, in general, but other Counties (PG, Montgomery, and Carroll in particular) did a HORRIBLE job. State road crews also get an "F". BW parkway was abysmal - two lanes cleared and then suddenly out of nowhere one lane ends. I mean, what were plow drivers doing? Very dangerous!
I know the crews work very hard and put in lots of extra hours, but logistically, there has got to be a better plan in place for these occasional big storms.

It's better to plow main streets several times, 10" at a time, DURING the storm (which lasted some 24-36 hours) than to wait and try to plow all 20"-24" when the storm is done. It's for that same reason that many people shovel/snowblow their driveways twice - it's easier to move the snow in two batches.