HRM and Winter Road Care

They, meaning the Halifax Regional Municipal Government, wonder why people get so pissed off about the way they take care of the roads in the winter. The answer can be summed up in one word; inconsistency.

Last Wednesday, January 16, they were calling for 10-15 cm of snow starting around noon. HRM had salt trucks out at FIVE AM!!!! The snow started, lightly at first, around 11:30. The roads were more than ready and the plows were ready. By the time rush hour started and the roads were ok. Sure there were some fender benders, mainly due to idiots driving too fast for the road conditions. The plows had been and were still out. Schools didn't have to be closed early.

Today, Tuesday, January 22nd, we have snow. They were calling for it to start overnight. It didn't start until around 6AM. Were the salt trucks out and the plows on standby? No. I took the dog to the park for a walk at 7AM and the roads were shite. No salt trucks had been by. NO plows had been by. I was on bus routes for the most part which HRM says are the FIRST places salted and plowed. It was pathetic. At 9:30 I had to take my mother out. The roads still hadn't been touched. At Noon I found myself out again and the roads were still in sad shape. By 1 PM I had seen ONE plow. The MIDDLE of my street, which is part of a bus route, had been plowed. ONLY the middle. Which of course meant that fucktards treated it as a one lane road.

Schools had been closed or rather NEVER opened because of the "storm". The previous Wednesday they didn't have to close early. The snowfall was pretty much the same both "storms". What a wild difference from the way the city responded a week before.

Why the blue hell would the response to snow be so inconsistent? HRM will whine about not being able to please everyone but this goes beyond that. It smacks of incompetency in the staff who are in charge of dealing with winter roads. They get their weather information from the same source I, and many others do, Environment Canada via the Weather Channel. Yet they can't seem to get their act together.

HRM often tries to use the excuse that the weather took them by surprise. The snow Tuesday was LATE starting so how the hell were they NOT ready? Inconsistent. Incompetent. One does lead to the other.