Mayor Greg Nickels reversed course today and said the city will use salt on the roads in emergency conditions, work more closely with Metro Transit and hire additional contractors to clean up sand after the storm.
The policy change came after the city got a lot of flak for its policy of packing down snow, using sand and some liquid de-icer in spots instead of clearing streets.
“In normal Seattle winters, this practice has served us well. But the three storms that we experienced this month dumped more than a foot of snow,” Nickels said during a press conference today. “This time, liquid de-icers were not enough. People were frustrated, and so was I. By amending our salting practices, we will be able to clear more roads faster, while maintaining our environmental commitment.”
Watch the full press conference here.
The mayor also said they’ll hire two private contracting crews to help five city crews clear up sand left over on streets. Looking at just Greenwood Avenue, they’ve got some work ahead of them, as sand covers the center turn lane and the bike lanes on each shoulder.
Also, the city will have crews out taking care of missed garbage collections on New Year’s Day. Though this doesn’t affect our neighborhoods, Thursday customers will have garbage picked up Friday and Friday customers will have theirs picked up Saturday.
3 responses so far ↓
1 Fnarf // Dec 31, 2008 at 1:35 pm
Salt is a waste of time if you don’t plow thoroughly first. This change won’t make a dang bit of difference.
2 Bill // Dec 31, 2008 at 5:44 pm
That is true, you do need to plow. Though I think Phinney/Greenwood were plowed fairly consistently the whole time. It was the hard pack ice that made things especially dicey. It was only the amount of traffic that wore grooves down to the pavement that made it somewhat passable for non 4WD vehicles. Getting the buses to run consistently in that situation would be a huge win. My parents on QA hill didn’t see a bus for an entire week and buses here were unreliable at best.
In my building we finally got our trash picked up, but our recycling has been overflowing for days!
3 Tiktok // Jan 1, 2009 at 11:49 am
Without plowing the sidestreets (which is unreasonable–too many, too narrow, too many cars parked there), many folks would still be stuck since they don’t own chains or snow tires.
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