> How can it be fairer? If you clear surface A before surface B, the people using surface A will always benefit from that, it doesn't matter who those people ar

> How can it be fairer? If you clear surface A before surface B, the people using surface A will always benefit from that, it doesn't matter who those people are. If you reverse it, the other people will benefit instead. This assumes that people using "surface A" and "surface B" are equally prone to accidents, that accidents are equally dangerous independent of the surface and in general that the inconvenience is equal, which is not the case for icy roads and icy sidewalks. Assume that each surface has an "ice cost" to its users that we want to minimize. Icy surface A has a cost of 1 and icy surface B has a cost of 3. When a surface is cleared of ice, its ice cost is zero. Consider then that there are two demographics X and Y. X always uses surface A. Y always uses surface B. * Uncleared, demographic Y pays a higher price. * If you clear surface A but not surface B, X will pay nothing, and Y will still pay the same price; the cost disparity has grown. * If you clear surface B, the cost disparity will shrink. The opportunities of demographics X and Y are more equal than before. If demographic X and Y are roughly equal in size, you have also minimized the total ice cost to society.