How They Deal With Snow in Japan
By Barry Ritholtz - January 4th, 2011, 9:43AM
Attention Americans:
THIS is how you deal with heavy snow.
Notice the expensive equipment; the high paid staff.
You want your streets cleaned whenever it snows? Step up and pay the man, you tax-bemoaning, private sector-worshiping, aphorism-spouting ‘tards.
If you want to contract this out through a competitive bidding process to private contractors, I don’t have a problem with that — but ultimately, it is paid for by tax dollars.
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January 4th, 2011 at 9:55 am
Ah, but we do have injury lawyers juss waitin’ for someone to get hit by a flake of snow from the blower.
We chose our path.
We chose wrong,
January 4th, 2011 at 10:02 am
Nice. So they clear the snow off the road, but they’re building a three story icefall that is going to come crashing down. Then they’ll have to come back and do it again. This company must have “consulting” somewhere in its name.
January 4th, 2011 at 10:17 am
I am sure we pay more tax dollar for what we get now ! Sure give the banks Billions to survive a crisis but make sure the snow is removed without overtime pay. The revolution should have started with something like this. Heck the French Revolution started for “Holes in the Bread”. Not to worry though the Media puppets made sure nobody was agitated and the status quo remains intact.
January 4th, 2011 at 10:17 am
Half my family is in Colorado and they know how to deal
with snow there. NYC knows how to deal with snow as well…except
this year when some Union Supervisors are trying making veiled
threats about cutting their budget. Come on BR, any NYer worth his
salt knows how corrupt the sanitation business is in NYC- it’s not
the guy on the street’s job who would be cut or phased back, it is
the cushy job of the administrator. On w73rd St. in Manhattan the
garbage is still piled high nine days after the storm! Those who
advocate less govt (state+local+Federal spending/redistribution are
approaching 50% of GDP) also subscribe to a hierarchy of needs view
on the matter- well run sanitation, police, fire, well kept roads,
bridges, etc. are among the highest priority but that does not mean
unlimited funding and unlimited supervisors.
January 4th, 2011 at 10:19 am
True. . .but the French Revolution at least had independent media to inform the people. We don’t.
January 4th, 2011 at 10:21 am
In all fairness, this particular road is quite famous for this snow and driving through it in a bus with the snow towering over you is a tourist attraction in itself. This is not in any sense a normal road.
January 4th, 2011 at 10:32 am
In some respects America is becoming more like France. During the last snow storm in Paris, the police simply flew over the blocked traffic and with a blowhorn told the drivers the roads would not be cleared. Get out of your cars and take the métro demanded the police.
No métro you say….C’est la vie. Hope you have blankets and a few Tic Tacs.
January 4th, 2011 at 10:43 am
It puzzles me, as to why its just such a big deal to get proper snow removal in many developed countries.
You know, Heathrow was a mess also.
The snow is not going to blow away on its own. By being stingy on this, everyone loses. What is wrong with the governance in Europe and the U.S.?
January 4th, 2011 at 11:04 am
As ook-boo mentioned, this place is famous for its levels
of snowfall. They carve you a beautiful road and then let tourists
pay to pass through it by bus or on foot. They charge 100 USD
one-way and 15 USD for a piece of luggage. How much do you want to
bet that money is paying for the impressive snow clearance? Google
Tateyama Alpine Route
January 4th, 2011 at 11:09 am
Hey yanks. Come up to Canada. We will teach you how to clear snow….and drink real beer too
January 4th, 2011 at 11:14 am
Holes in the bread?
You notice those stayed. Worse yet they sell them to us at a premium now and call them donuts.
D’oh!
January 4th, 2011 at 11:19 am
Don’t NYC residents already pay some of the highest taxes in the country, not even counting double-dipping scams like crash taxes? Aren’t they “paying the man” already?
~~~
BR: They pay high taxes for extensive services — mass transit, extensive parks, public arts, etc.
January 4th, 2011 at 12:18 pm
Anybody that wants to go about their daily lives when it snows 20″ or so should move to Buffalo or Syracuse, where 20″ or more occurs all the time–it doesn’t even make the news! But if it snows 80″ in a day there, the same thing will happen there as when it snows 20″ in NYC. It’s all relative. Whenever you get extra snow, for wherever you are, you gotta stay put.
January 4th, 2011 at 12:28 pm
@Hantra You got it buddy. @How the Common Man Sees It As the economy in late 18th Century failed the quality of wheat used to make common bread degraded regularly. Until such a point that the working folks protested their condition and that of their bread. This is what caused Ms Antoinette to make her proclamation “Let them eat cake” . It has something to do with the amount of sugar and yeast and the leavening of the bread. There was little else one had, other than their daily bread, for a long stretches of human history. In theory if you buy a loaf of bread and it is filled with “bubbles” ie holes, you are getting ripped off. Worse yet ripped off and hungry.
January 4th, 2011 at 12:31 pm
I’ve lived in the snow belt in New England and in ski country out west. Never experienced a problem with snow removal. I agree with Yossarian.
January 4th, 2011 at 1:19 pm
@Maseratij,
I’ve done some study on the French revolution but didn’t know that piece of trivia. I knew all about the M.A. debacle and there is much dispute about the authenticity of what actually went down regarding what she said (I think I have now heard three distinct versions) but I don’t doubt the ‘holey’ bread story. This, of course, was just a marketing issue that the modern day spin meisters would not have a problem slipping past the people with a few key slogans. Back then, they were still amateurs and were still figuring out the power of the press.
January 4th, 2011 at 1:40 pm
I lived in Lake Tahoe for 15 years. We’d get an AVERAGE of 35 FEET of snow each year. A typical storm was 2 to 3 feet. No problems whatsoever unless we got 6 or 8 feet in a day or so, then it would take perhaps ONE extra day to clear it out, but the main roads were cleared in hours.
It can be done but it is expensive. Governments prepare for the typical—not the outlier—storm unless there are major safety issue involved.
I don’t know what people expect. It snows much more than normal and people freak out that government isn’t prepared. Hogwash. It was a freak storm. If it starts happening more often then expect government to be better prepared.
You either prepare for those very rare occasions with lots of extra capacity or you don’t. Most people are not prepared to have lots of idle overcapacity. So chill out and relax.
It’s a collective choice and you have to live with the consequences.
January 4th, 2011 at 5:29 pm
It was not such an outlier, see Feb 2010: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:BYMP-RdebuMJ:www.businessweek.com/news/2010-02-27/nyc-snow-storm-sets-record-stops-flights-cuts-power-update1-.html+ny+snow+storms+2010&cd=8&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
I live in NYC and typically plows come by throughout the night. This time: nothing for two days. Areas in Yonkers right over the NYC border were fine while the BX was still buried.
January 4th, 2011 at 7:34 pm
Whether you are in Paris or New York with streets full of cars, there’s simply nowhere you can put the snow, unless you want to bury cars in ice for days.
I have seen this kind of equipment, I grew up in the Jura mountains in France, but you can’t just blast snow at buildings.
I understand some are pissed off, Suffolk county small roads were not good, no salt/sand but seriously, you have a snow storm coming, keep your F-ing car off the road.
January 4th, 2011 at 8:01 pm
BR, something was very screwy in NYC. We’ve had bigger storms before, but I don’t recall this level of either incompetence or perhaps sabotage before. I saw far fewer than usual sand/salt trucks on the road during the storm. On Saturday afternoon I saw plenty of sand/salt trucks just parked at the curb of the UES with Sanitation guys doing nothing. By Saturday, there was no longer any need for salt/sand. The roads on the UES were fine by then. They could/should have been collecting garbage by then. Again, I don’t know if it was management incompetence or the alleged slowdown. NYC has the highest friggin’ taxes in the country, water bills that have been compounding at double digit rates for many years, real estate taxes that continue to climb despite lower values and your solution is higher taxes I assume?
January 4th, 2011 at 8:02 pm
Your snow problems on the East coast has nothing to do with public/private. It does have to do with having the right equipment (which you don’t b/c this doesn’t happen that often), and having the right form of labor. You have heavily unionized—everything, frankly and are one of the last vestiges for unions.
I am amazed that anything happens in NYC as inefficient as the Unions have made it.
January 4th, 2011 at 10:20 pm
Hey Barry,
Per your mention of the Japanese snow machinery, just know that the
California DOT has machinery exactly like that in use in NorCal
(Tahoe, etc.) I was out there last week for vacation during the
snowpocalypse in NY, and we got about 3-4′ of snow (and had basically
zero issues with it, as they’d plow then use those snow throwers to
cut edges on the sides of the road.)
Very cool to watch, btw.
January 5th, 2011 at 12:52 pm
Why then do we spend millions and millions on weather prediction if it is not used in this instance. Sure they do not happen very often but the storm was predicted for days. The argument that there is no where to put the snow is absurd. There has never been a place to put the snow.
There is no excuse, we are the greatest nation on earth or we are not. We apply technologies to get results or we maintain the status quo. Micro Trading and Weather forecasting and $30k pacemakers for people that do not need them. Do you mean to say there is no technology that can take care of the snow situation?
The equipment is too expensive to inventory? Open up the public parking spaces so cars can be taken off the streets perhaps. How many parking lots and garages were empty that night?
Work together, apply technology for solutions that make life better for people and not for corporate profit !!!!
@How the Common Man Sees It ….. Yes they have mastered the art of spinning us into compliance. After your first comment that the press would never upset the cart, I thought perhaps music could get the music out. Alas….. they now control distribution of music better than ever.