Just consider this me backseat driving our bus system…
By perhaps the 2nd or 3rd day of snow and only after a painful learning curve, buses in Seattle seem to have settled into a comfortable routine. Sure it’s a routine where half of the buses aren’t running, and most routes are unpredictable in terms of pickup and travel times, but at least the routes have settled down. However, these routes don’t look much like their published adverse weather routes (for example the 13 adverse weather route – had planned on still making it up the hill). And during the first days of snow people were stranded without even knowing which bus stop to wait at or which bus to take.
I humbly submit to the Internet my weather plan for the next snow season.
1. Find the most level, drivable route to serve a neighborhood. One way of doing this is to look at the routes as they exist right now. Now name these routes something easy, like #1S replacing the #1 (S for snow).
2. At the first hint of snow, announce to every media outlet you can that Seattle will be switching to snow routes. This shouldn’t be hard, since news reporters love this sort of thing. And don’t overlook the “first hint of snow” piece of this – buses are no good to anyone if they’re broken down on hills.
3. At every stop list directions to the nearest snow route stop, the snow route number, and a phone number to call if you need assistance (for those that can’t walk down a snow-covered hill).
4. Every non-articulated bus that serves a route that is canceled should now join these snow routes. This is critical, since we need to keep frequency high on these now overloaded routes.
5. 4×4 shuttle buses can ferry people up and down hills where required.
6. I’d have the city send someone around to shovel snow off of at least a few walking routes from each hill.
Yes, this will result in people that live on hills having to do a little more walking in the snow. But I’m sure I’m not alone in thinking an extra 10 minute walk to a reliable and predictable bus beats the current system hands-down.
Great ideas, Matt. I would add 2 items:
7) Do not isolate large swathes of the city in the planning of the Snow Routes. The area east of 23rd, north of Jackson and south of the arboretum has basically been with out service since the morning of the 18th. All well and good for those who need not venture too far from home, but some of our neighbors are downtown workers who chose to live close to the CBD and use the bus to commute. It should not have taken more than a week to “re-establish” the #3 and #11 snow routes – and both SDOT and KCM bear responsibility for this. I know there are parts of Ballard, Magnolia and West Seattle which suffered similarly.
Join the ranks of “real” northern cities and post “Snow Emergency Route” signs along the designated Snow Routes, banning on-street automobile parking parking 24/7 from 15th November through 15th March each winter. SDOT and KCM must work together to maintain the transportation part of the social contract in our city.
I’ll add two comments of my own:
9) Plow, sand, and salt to maintain key streets as bare pavement. This would include Madison and Broadway to access Swedish First Hill, Cherry to access Swedish Cherry Hill, Boren and James to access Harborview. Contract with a private excavation and hauling company to provide additional plowing during major storms. Send your plow drivers to practice with the WaDOT plow operators or eastern Washington county plow drivers once or twice a year to keep their skills up.
10) Consider upgrading Link to cold country standards, with heated switches, so it can operate during snow storms.
And an aside:
11) my neighborhood is full of lazy-ass people who didn’t shovel their sidewalks. Come on folks, show some consideration for your elderly and heavily-laden neighbors.
Definitely #7. My list above assumes there’s flat land within walking distance. If not, we need to take the next step and plow a route well enough to get a bus in and out.
#8 is fine, but doesn’t quite make my list. It seems like overkill for our region. But then I haven’t lived in a real snow city before, and maybe it makes more sense that I realize.
9 goes too far, except to reach truly inaccessible areas by bus. I have little interest in getting 2-wheel drive cars around our city in this situation, and it makes little sense to have the infrastructure to clear all bus routes to this level. We need basic service that people can walk to, and little else.
I’m on board with 10. The costs can’t be that high compared to the value lost when a route is shut down.
11 is beside the point of this post, but I’ll digress along with you. I don’t own a snow shovel, and went to several stores to look for one (all sold out). I’ll be more prepared for next time, and I hope others will be as well. That being said, we should at least have the city provide a basic route down hills.
Re #9: I think it’s a question of life safety. Seattle’s major hospitals need clear access. Luckily, the same emergency routes that let ambulances get to a hospital also can support bus service. It really shouldn’t be too hard for our present plow fleet, if they were really operated 24/7 and allowed to spread salt, to keep a set of snow routes clear to bare pavement.
There should be plenty of affordable ways to do this if I’m wrong: reconditioned municipal plow/spreader trucks purchased as a “reserve fleet,” plows on refuse trucks, outside contractors, etc.
I’m with Matt; I’m not too worried about my neighbor with the rear-wheel drive BMW-he can take the bus.
The life safety issue is interesting, and a bit of a separate topic. Are there 4wd ambulances? If not, why not? How will they get to houses up a hill a few blocks from an arterial? How about fire trucks? I think plowing the arterials doesn’t get either to their destination, and we should really have some 4wd vehicles for snow days. It wouldn’t kill us to have a few 4wd police cars either (being Seattle, maybe we make them Subarus).
Regarding your assertion that it shouldn’t be hard to plow arterials, I’d disagree but I think we’re getting to finer point arguments. The reason they don’t plow all the way down to the road is that we have rubber-bottomed snowplows so that we don’t tear up our roads, reflectors, and manholes (many stick up above the pavement). They do currently plow 24/7, and I really don’t buy the argument that salt will give us completely clear roads at least without changing our snowplows (and entire road system) to plow down to the surface. For me it’s a matter of preference, but I’ve been to many salt-based winter cities that have terrible rust problems.
Rubber cutting edges can easily plow down to bare asphalt, so far as I know. Airport runway plows have rubber edges. I honestly don’t believe that the City begins plowing as soon as the snow starts accumulating with their full fleet, and keeps at it until high-priority roads are down to bare pavement. I think they half-assed it, to save money on overtime. Other cities really do a much better job with the same equipment, albeit with the addition of melting-point depressants.
I agree the last few blocks to a medical emergency will always be hard during a winter storm. The EMS captain and fire chiefs have 4WD Suburbans, so a first responder should be able to get pretty close. What about the rest of the emergency response? Once a patient is in an ambulance, the medics are faced with gridlocked streets. The city has plowed only one travel lane, and pushed snow into the median, so most intersections are next to impossible to navigate.