4 ms·

> only a handful of days of snow in the year I know modern economy has gone full-JIT but I naively wish we could just stop in this case and.. wait. Then this

> only a handful of days of snow in the year I know modern economy has gone full-JIT but I naively wish we could just stop in this case and.. wait. Then this question of truck fleet would be moot.

rsstack 4y ago
First: I don't go out in snow beyond a couple of blocks, things can wait. But that's me. Second: Just because the snow stops falling doesn't mean the problem goes away. The snow can take a couple of weeks to melt (essentially until the next rain, or a hot enough day), so stopping and waiting for nature to resolve the situation on its own would shut down the city for a month or so every year.
- giantg2 4y ago
  And during that time, it can turn to ice.
- thomascgalvin 4y ago
  I wonder how much it would cost to heat the roads rather than plow them, and how that would compare to the current solution, long-term. NYC already has an extensive underground infrastructure ...
  - rsstack 4y ago
    It is essentially impossible to add anything underground in NYC _because_ of the extensive underground infrastructure. It is all but saturated.
Bostonian 4y ago
Millions of NYC residents have jobs and schools to go to and grocery shopping to be done. Locking them down for even a few days has huge costs.
JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> naively wish we could just stop in this case and.. wait Congratulations, you shut off logistics and emergency services for a population the size of Virginia.
- smileysteve 4y ago
  There's a lot to be said that we should rethink logistics and emergency services to use other modes if it's more resilient to severe weather, supply chain shortages (fuel) - or everyday things like traffic and construction
- Y_Y 4y ago
  [flagged]
mananaysiempre 4y ago
You really don’t want that. I mean, if you’re sure things are going to stay below -10°C for the forseeable future, by all means leave the snow on the roads, and I wish more places in Northern Europe would do that. (Winter days become much more tolerable when what little light you have is reflected back by snow.) But if they are not and especially if they are going back and forth, then you’re getting slush, half-frozen slush, frozen slush packed into ice, or half-frozen slush on top of frozen slush packed into ice, and not only do you not want to drive on that, it’s also a pain to remove even from pedestrian paths, because you need power tools to break it up and then you have a crapton of inch-thick sheets of ice you have to transport and dump to melt somewhere. They take a couple of weeks to melt naturally on the road, or a couple of months under the spring sun if you pile them up on the side of the road (which also happens to look hideous).
porb121 4y ago
You're talking about a city of 10+ million people.
tinglymintyfrsh 4y ago
With that luxury, sure. Emergencies happen. The garbage needs to be picked up. Total the costs of icy sidewalk slip and falls, lost economic activity, and excess deaths (QALY) over 10 years. Spend 1/4 of that on a series of underground passageways (un)like MIT.
- alistairSH 4y ago
  ...the costs of icy sidewalk slip and falls... No garbage-truck/plow is going to fix that, whether it be powered by EV, ICE, or unicorn farts.

> only a handful of days of snow in the year I know modern economy has gone full-JIT but I naively wish we could just stop in this case and.. wait. Then this question of truck fleet would be moot.

rsstack 4y ago

First: I don't go out in snow beyond a couple of blocks, things can wait. But that's me. Second: Just because the snow stops falling doesn't mean the problem goes away. The snow can take a couple of weeks to melt (essentially until the next rain, or a hot enough day), so stopping and waiting for nature to resolve the situation on its own would shut down the city for a month or so every year.

giantg2 4y ago
And during that time, it can turn to ice.
thomascgalvin 4y ago
I wonder how much it would cost to heat the roads rather than plow them, and how that would compare to the current solution, long-term. NYC already has an extensive underground infrastructure ...
- rsstack 4y ago
  It is essentially impossible to add anything underground in NYC _because_ of the extensive underground infrastructure. It is all but saturated.

Bostonian 4y ago

Millions of NYC residents have jobs and schools to go to and grocery shopping to be done. Locking them down for even a few days has huge costs.

JumpCrisscross 4y ago

> naively wish we could just stop in this case and.. wait Congratulations, you shut off logistics and emergency services for a population the size of Virginia.

smileysteve 4y ago
There's a lot to be said that we should rethink logistics and emergency services to use other modes if it's more resilient to severe weather, supply chain shortages (fuel) - or everyday things like traffic and construction
Y_Y 4y ago
[flagged]

mananaysiempre 4y ago

You really don’t want that. I mean, if you’re sure things are going to stay below -10°C for the forseeable future, by all means leave the snow on the roads, and I wish more places in Northern Europe would do that. (Winter days become much more tolerable when what little light you have is reflected back by snow.) But if they are not and especially if they are going back and forth, then you’re getting slush, half-frozen slush, frozen slush packed into ice, or half-frozen slush on top of frozen slush packed into ice, and not only do you not want to drive on that, it’s also a pain to remove even from pedestrian paths, because you need power tools to break it up and then you have a crapton of inch-thick sheets of ice you have to transport and dump to melt somewhere. They take a couple of weeks to melt naturally on the road, or a couple of months under the spring sun if you pile them up on the side of the road (which also happens to look hideous).

porb121 4y ago

You're talking about a city of 10+ million people.

tinglymintyfrsh 4y ago

With that luxury, sure. Emergencies happen. The garbage needs to be picked up. Total the costs of icy sidewalk slip and falls, lost economic activity, and excess deaths (QALY) over 10 years. Spend 1/4 of that on a series of underground passageways (un)like MIT.

alistairSH 4y ago
...the costs of icy sidewalk slip and falls... No garbage-truck/plow is going to fix that, whether it be powered by EV, ICE, or unicorn farts.