Snow Removal Statistics

Spokesman-Review Letter To The Editor
Plowing comparison fails

Concerning Ms. Scotts Letter of Jan. 21, I would like to correct some errors and misconceptions. The town of Bountiful, Utah, has 150 lane miles to plow (that is not a typo, 150 miles) and 22 pieces of equipment. I know; I called them.

Likewise, Salt Lake City has 1,785 lane miles, 77 pieces of equipment and 177 employees. The city of Spokane has 2,186 lane miles to plow, 40 pieces of equipment and approximately 50 employees.

The ratio of lane miles to plow vs. pieces of equipment and people to run said equipment is much higher in the mentioned cities in Ms. Scott’s letter. This requires tax dollars!

Knowledge of how to plow isn’t what is lacking, it’s public funding to buy adequate equipment and manpower. As far as how soon they were plowing, the snow started falling Dec. 17, crews were plowing by Dec. 17. As an educator in the schools, might I suggest you do the research and the math before you put the pen to paper.

Shelley Anderson

By the way, no one from the City of Spokane responded to my inquiry from last week about putting plows on the front of garbage trucks. Someone from the City of Coeur d'Alene did though. Tim Martin said:

I think you would find that this would not be feasible for the city of Coeur d'Alene. Several factors are involved in this reasoning,

The city of Coeur d’Alene contracts Waste Management for the curb or alleyway pickup for refuse and recyclable goods. With that process we would have to coordinate with them so we could use our “State of the Art” loaders with gates on the plows. This allows us to reduce the size of the berms in driveways.

By coordinating this effort, I believe snow service would be reduced as we would be limited to only being able to plow where these routes were for that given day.

If I were to look into the city of Detroit and New York’s snow plan I would imagine that they did not plow residential areas. I did look up their respective annual amount of snow and they are meager I compared to what we receive. Less than 35 inches.