Chapotraphouse

It's a logistical nightmare for the city to mobilise for a snowstorm. At least here, the workers are only with the city because they give a shit about the social utility of the work. If they worked the same storm in the private sector, they'd make 2-3x as much. 5-10x as much if they owned a pickup truck. They're usually getting the muster call at midnight to wake up at 2 AM for a 4 AM report time, then only getting 6 hours of normal-rate work at best. Almost all of them are seasonal workers who otherwise don't get any hours between September and March, making less than they could in fast food without benefits. This season, despite having full availability on the muster sheet and being required to answer the call no matter when under threat of losing that job, there have only been two snow storms and I haven't been called in for either.

We could and do outsource parts of that work to contractors. They do a terrible job because they care about profit instead of social utility, frequently damaging stuff that we then have to repair because the contractors to do that cost way more too. All of those workers are making $30-50/hour to do a worse job than the municipal workers do for $17.50/hour. They're taking our jobs and we're empowering them over the winter to do more in the spring, where more is poisoning our water supply and air to give rich assholes green lawns and increase our rent. Reinforcing those contracts only offloads more work to the private sector with direct consequences for everything that touches.

The mixed responsibility means they can't do anything more than patchwork clearing of the spaces that need to be safe by the time people wake up. If they assume control of the non-municipal spaces that time instead of waiting 24 hours to fine the HOA/landlord or let the feds/county/state use their budgets for that, it's instantly expected to the same standard next time. All of that falls on the backs of the skeleton crew the city can convince to work for half the pay and no health insurance beyond workman's comp at the city-run clinic.

There's no way in hell I'd do it unless I was a communist doing what I'd do for free under communism and clearing the routes that I use to make them safe for my neighbours.

Snow is dumb if you think about it, water, but solid? stupid water how are you supposed to flow??

But you see, capitalism breeds efficiency.

The second largest city in Denmark didn't budget properly for snow removal last year, resulting in thousands of people not having proper access to roads for weeks, hundreds of people were totally stuck in their homes for days and had to be dug out by individual volunteers or social workers doing it on their own.

I find that can be particularly problematic at highway on-off ramps where both the local road authority and the state or federal authority will loki’s neck the dividing line between their sections. So you get chunks where neither deal with it because they think it’s the other’s responsibility.

Snow is something that makes a very good case for the opportunity cost of taking up space in an urban setting.

100 people living in an apartment building that takes up 1 unit of area? You need to clear X units of sidewalk. 100 people living in ranch-style houses that take up 5 units of area? You need to clear 5X units of sidewalk plus a bunch extra for everyone's front walkway.

It's the same thing with salting the roads, and also road maintenance, utility lines, and so on. Taking up space that a bunch of people go past means you lengthen everybody else's commute by that much, you pose an obstacle to their movement by that much. If you live alone on an urban lot that could otherwise comfortably house 10 people, you are taking up 10 personal shares of resources.

We could build cities in such a density that the services per citizen are so low that it's a negligible fraction of the workforce. But noooooo, we "don't want to live stacked on top of each other", so we compete to drive up the prices of upkeep and then offload it reactively, through market forces, onto whoever's on the other side.