Quote:
Originally Posted by counterfactual
To me, the temperature is just a complete red herring. And it's an excuse that's used every year. It seems last year was a record. Now, it is again! 0
Why is it a red herring? Because despite the temperatures, record or not, the ice has, in fact, been cleared in places where proper steps have been taken-- mainly, salt laid on sidewalks regularly until the ice is gone.
On the peninsula, a vast majority of sidewalks are icy death paths. However, even on the icy death paths, there are patches where the sidewalk is mostly clear. They are usually found around public institutions like hospitals and main avenues on university campuses, who have staff to buy and lay down salt on the sidewalks daily. It's also this case around certain businesses on core streets like Spring Garden, for example.
In those patches, the sidewalks are clear. But then you continue past the hospital or university or business and the sidewalk is an icy death path again, with pathetic little granules of gravel laid, that do absolutely nothing.
The roads are clear. And in patches, the sidewalks are clear. The rest is ice. The difference, is that salt is being laid on the former, and not the latter.
Why? It's a cheapo budget thing. The private contractors are not spending the money to lay salt on sidewalks. And Butts and the City Government aren't forcing them to do so. They need to take responsibility. They started charging more premiums in 2013, and have delivered pathetic sidewalk clearance.
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I agree that they sure could do better than they are doing.
I am curious as to why more business owners aren't taking it upon themselves to clear the sidewalks in front of their business. It only makes sense that they should do this to make it easier for their customers to get into their business. That doesn't give the city an out, IMHO, but if everybody did their little bit, there would be a lot less for the city to deal with.
Regarding using salt to melt 15 cm of ice, from personal experience I have found you have to dump an obscene amount of salt on it to penetrate to the concrete, otherwise you just melt little holes in the top layer that melts until the salt is gone, and then tends to refreeze over time once the salt water becomes diluted enough with melted ice.
The crushed stone is put on top of the ice to create friction on the surface so your boots won't slip when you walk on it. That said, once the sun heats up the little pieces of stone they tend to melt their way down into the ice and refreeze below the surface at night.
The only solution at this point is to manually break up the ice and remove it, or use obscene amounts of salt or other de-icer to weaken the ice, and then remove it. IMHO, there aren't a lot of good choices in machinery around here to break up the ice without damaging the sidewalk below, and I'm not sure if there are environmental limits to how much salt can be applied at one time.
I think the real cause of the problem is the combination of an unusual series of storms (snow-rain-snow-freeze), and the resultant ice not being dealt with properly after each storm. The sidewalks were either not cleared or only cleared in a half-assed way after each storm and the ice was allowed to build up over time. Finally, it's at the point where just about the only thing to be done is take a pick-axe to it or wait for the spring thaw.
I'm kinda surprised that we as a city aren't better at dealing with this type of weather, since we've only had snowy, icy winter conditions
forever. Yeesh.
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