Seattle Should Buy More Snowplows

Seattle needs to invest in more snowplows.

We have just gotten though a snowy period that severely affected Seattle for days, resulting in closed businesses, shuttered schools, severely reduced bus service, and an inability to travel in many of the residential neighborhoods.  The University of Washington Seattle campus, with over 50, 000 students, staff and faculty, was totally or partially closed for seven days.

This blog examines the costs of snow/ice events for Seattle and suggests that the purchase of snowplows would be an extraordinarily good investment that could rapidly open up the city, save lives, lessen injuries, and save businesses millions of dollars per day.

Meteorological Background

Sea-Tac Airport typically gets about 7-8 inches a year, usually in 2-3 minor events, with major snow winters (20 inches or more) roughly once a decade (see figure below).    This year was a big one, with the last major "snow apocalypse"  in 2008 (the one with two weeks of ice and snow that closed down the city and ended the career of Mayor Nickels).  The higher hills of north Seattle usually get even more than Sea Tac.

Image courtesy of Justin Shaw, Seattle Weather Blog

Mastering the Technology of Dealing with Snow

The December 2008 disaster not only led to the removal of Mayor Nickels, but resulted in major improvements in how Seattle dealt with snow.   Mayor McGinn hired a snow savvy head of SDOT (Peter Hahn), secured more plows (with steel edges), started using salt and aggressive pre-treatment, and developed a coherent plan of action, triaging the key arterials.  He also worked with my group at the UW to secure better weather forecasts, added road temperature sensors, and supported the Seattle/UW SnowWatch site.

Seattle mastered the key elements of dealing with our snow, including pre-treatment with deicers, immediate removal of snow to prevent the inevitable ice-layer formation, and post-treatment with salt.  Even the Salt Institute applauded their measures (see below)

The impacts of this snow-wise approach were highly positive, preventing the build up of ice and snow on the main arterials and downtown during subsequent snow events.  Mayor Durkan has wisely kept the McGinn snow approach in place, and many key arterials were in decent shape during our February Snowmageddon, or whatever you like to call it.  Mayor Durkan will escape Nickel's fate.

But Seattle Needs to Do More, Much More

But there IS a problem:  most of the city remained snow bound, with many of the hilly neighborhoods inaccessible by normal vehicles.   The essential fact is that the city simply does not have enough equipment to clear more than a small proportion of the streets.   Seattle has only 36 plows, which is only enough to clear central downtown and a handful of arterials,

Seattle has done considerable planning for snow removal and has a strategic plan for dealing with snow, including pretreatment, plowing, and prioritizing roadways. As shown in their map below, priority is given to "gold" roads (downtown, Aurora, Lake City Way, etc.) that are given total treatment and when they have time they hit the Emerald routes, doing one lane in each direction.

The trouble is that they don't get to the Emerald routes for hours, if at all, something shown by their road plowing status map during the end of the last snow event.  Most of NE Seattle and Magnolia had no plowing at all.

Now I am not blaming any of the SDOT personnel doing snow removal.  They were clearly working as hard as they could with the equipment they have.   It's just that they didn't have enough equipment.

The Modest Cost of Fixing the Problem

Several years ago, Steve Pratt, the SDOT road maintenance chief under Mayor McGinn, estimated it would take 100 snowplows to really open up the city during snow events.  So we would need 64 more snow plows than we have today (36).   Just to supply some perspective, Portland, amuch smaller cit,y has 56 plows, Sea-Tac airport has 25 snow plows.

How much would  64 snowplows cost?    There is no need to buy ultra-expensive large truck/plow combinations (which can run $150,000)   We could do as many cities do and purchase snow plows that can be attached to pickup trucks and other smaller vehicles, which the city should have plenty of.  Furthermore, the smaller units will be able to move up into our side streets better.

I spent an hour shopping for a high quality snowplow blade with all the bells and whistles.  You can secure a low-end one for about $2000 and a very high quality unit for $5000-7000.  Maybe the ProPlus with LED lights (see below).   It even comes with a coffee holder for the driver.

OK, this is Seattle, so let's go for the primo $7000 unit and add $3000 for installation and training. 
Bottom line: $10,000 a unit.  A total cost of $640,000 to be ready.   And let's throw in $200,000 for gasoline, overtime pay, maintenance, and costs I haven't thought about for each year it is used.  That is $ 840,000 for the first year.  And $200,000 for subsequent years.

As noted in the next section, this is a HUGE bargain for what it does for the city.

How Much Does a Snowstorm Coast the City?

The costs of a "snow day" is enormous.  Businesses close, theaters cancel shows, restaurants are empty or close, school can't educate students, and much, much more. I would argue that the costs are EASILY tens of millions of dollars per day for Seattle alone.

Consider this argument.  Seattle has a population of 725,000.   Let's assume 500,000 of these folks are working or going to school.  For a major snow day, let's assume 200,000 folks are not able to go to school or work.  Let us further assume that the value of the work or education that was missed that day was worth $100.    Then the cost of the snow day would be  20 million dollars. 

Now I suspect this is a huge underestimate.  I bet on the worst snow days, half the city wasn't working or going to school.  $100 a day of work value seems cheap.  And what about all the injuries, damage, and deaths on the roadways due to snow?   I bet the real costs are closer to 50 million dollars a day (if any of you can give me a better number, please HELP!).

Assuming we had 5 snow days this month, the costs would be 100 million to 250 million due to the snow.

The snow plows would cost $840,000. 

Am I crazy or does buying snowplows seems a really, really good deal for the city?  The cost of protection is less than 1% of the cost of the loss.   

There is all kinds of glib talk that the city should not buy snowplows because heavy snow is relatively rare.  But the analysis above suggest that the clear logic is to buy snowplows.

Can you imagine how popular Mayor Durkan would be if she got the additional plows and the city was nearly snow free during the next snow event?   She would be Mayor for LIFE!

And there WILL be another snow event.  Perhaps as early as this Saturday.









from Cliff Mass Weather and Climate Blog https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2019/02/seattle-should-buy-more-snowplows.html