Wonder how long they will keep trying this stupid stunt.
From the
Seattle Times:
Seattle refuses to use salt; roads "snow packed" by design
To hear the city's spin, Seattle's road crews are making "great progress" in clearing the ice-caked streets.
But it turns out "plowed streets" in Seattle actually means "snow-packed," as in there's snow and ice left on major arterials by design.
"We're trying to create a hard-packed surface," said Alex Wiggins, chief of staff for the Seattle Department of Transportation. "It doesn't look like anything you'd find in Chicago or New York."
The city's approach means crews clear the roads enough for all-wheel and four-wheel-drive vehicles, or those with front-wheel drive cars as long as they are using chains, Wiggins said.
The icy streets are the result of Seattle's refusal to use salt, an effective ice-buster used by the state Department of Transportation and cities accustomed to dealing with heavy winter snows.
"If we were using salt, you'd see patches of bare road because salt is very effective," Wiggins said. "We decided not to utilize salt because it's not a healthy addition to Puget Sound."
And of course, Alex didn't bother to check with other cities:
Many cities are moving away from sand because it clogs the sewers, runs into waterways, creates air pollution and costs more to clean up.
Its main attraction is that it typically costs less than one-fifth the price of salt, according to Spector.
"We never use sand," said Ann Williams, spokeswoman for Denver's Department of Public Works. "Sand causes dust, and there's also water-quality issues where it goes into streets and into our rivers."
And the Times fact-check's Alex's math:
Between Thursday and Monday, the city spread about 6,000 tons of sand on 1,531 miles of streets it considers major arterials.
The tonnage, sprinkled atop the packed snow, amounts to 1.4 pounds of sand per linear foot of roadway, an amount one expert said might be too little to provide effective traction.
"Hmmm. Six thousand tons of sand for that length of road doesn't seem like it's enough," said Diane Spector, a water-resources planner for Wenck Associates, which evaluated snow and ice clearance for nine cities in the Midwest.
Typical Seattle tax and spend. No thinking involved.
Posted by DaveH at December 23, 2008 3:14 PM