"500 plows in the whole of the UK"

[randomness]

So, I just heard on PRI's "The World" radio news show that the United Kingdom has 500 snowplows for the entire country.

They gave no context for this number. The story certainly gives the impression that this is very few, but how many is a reasonable number? I don't know how many snowplows Massachusetts has, for example.

Leaving aside whether this is true, whether this number only counts plows under the control of the Ministry of Transport, or what... I still don't know how that number compares with places which get more snow.

I'm not blaming the show, as this was more or less an atmosphere piece about how England has come to a sliding, slippery halt because of the weather; but I am really wondering what a baseline number of plows is for a place that gets snow regularly.

Comments

[gee-tar.livejournal.com]

Well after 2 minutes of Google searching I couldn't find any information on Massachusetts, but as a basis of comparison, I discovered Wisconsin (no stranger to snow) has 729 snowplows for its highways. Wisconsin is about 65,000 square miles to the UK's 94,000 or so, which would indicate that yeah, 500 does seem a little low. If you assume Wisconsin has the same density of roads (a bad assumption, I admit, since the UK has a significantly higher population) and is reasonably competent at removing snow, that would indicate that the UK should have at least 1000 snowplows.

But I'm only using a single data point and weak conjecture. I'd love to learn more about the issue, but would rather go to bed at this point.

[lillibet.livejournal.com]

And that's only highways. Individual towns are probably responsible for their own plowing, as in Massachusetts.

[awfief.livejournal.com]

I was going to use your square mileage approach, but really it depends on how many miles of road (multiplied by # lanes, too, to get basically how many miles of plowing there are).