This afternoon the city of Seattle released their new plan to cope with the big snow storms that probably won’t happen this year.
They’ve put a new snow-knowledgeable man in charge of the storm response, hiring Monty Sedlak from Arapahoe County Colorado as the new Director of Street Maintenance. And they’ve decided to use more salt and less sand, better communication with citizens, and new technology such as GPS to track the department’s trucks
The city has also released a new map that shows where they’ll muster their snow removal forces. It divides things up into four categories:
- Level 1 (dark green on the map) streets get the most attention, with a commitment to keep them bare and wet at all times
- Level 2 (dark blue) streets are next, with a commitment to keep at least one lane bare and wet in each direction
- Level 3 (light green) streets will only get attention for curves, hills, and stopping zones
- All other streets, mostly non-arterials, will likely get minimal cleanup resources
Here’s the old map:
In addition to the new granular planning for curves and trouble spots, you can see that the new additions are plowing Pike all the way to downtown, and clearing 15th Ave between Madison and John and Thomas between 15th and 23rd.
Doesn’t SDOT talk to Metro? If this map is accurate, we can say farewell to the 10, 12, 14, 25 and probably the 8, 9, 11, 43, 48 and 49 — leaving no service on Capitol Hill at all!
Sounds about right to me. Even bus routes with “cleared” roads don’t run on any sort of schedule during snowstorms.
Don’t worry, though. It never snows in Seattle. It has never snowed once in Seattle. You don’t need to prepare at all because we never get snow.
Ok, so Capitol Hill has no Level 1 (which is mostly just downtown, Aurora, and other major arteries). I don’t consider 23rd/24th, north of Madison, part of Capitol Hill so I’m not counting that.
Still, level 2 with 1 lane clear isn’t too bad. It’s better than snopocalyse, when we had no lanes clear on Denny hill or Pike St. Now lets see if they actually manage to do this if there is another snow storm.
The City had a priority map during the last disaster: didn’t do anything to avert it. Also seems to me the City is forgetting the neighborhoods are covered by networks of streets. You can clear problems on one part of the network and other parts of the network may still be unable to access the network because of a lack of attention to interconnections.. But, hey, no worry, I agree with Jason, this is Seattle and we never have any problems here cuz we are the bestest City in the Whole-Wide World – always have been and always will be. Nothing bad or dysfunctional ever happens here. Think positive thoughts;)
why are broadway or madison not level 1? weird.
I’m glad to see Pike getting higher priority but now I’m concerned about Pine. The busses from downtown to Cap Hill take Pike up to Bellevue Ave, then jog over to Pine to get to Broadway. If Pine isn’t cleared, the buses can’t move.