"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

[redbird]

All I know is that my friend Alan, born and raised in Toronto, thought six was woefully inadequate for Seattle.

[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]

According to arlingtonma.gov:

Depending on the severity and duration of the storm the operation could include as few as 2 vehicles to over 60 pieces of equipment. In a full-scale operation over 2/3 of the equipment on the streets will be private contractors working for the Town.

That's probably part of why data is so hard to find.

[contrariety.livejournal.com]

...If this number is correct then I HAVE to assume that most of them are in Scotland.

Maybe they meant England, and not the entire UK?

[stolen-tea.livejournal.com]

For a while, at least, King County in Washington State had 2.

[earthling177.livejournal.com]

Oh, Gosh, I was gonna tell you this story when you were here and forgot, altho, chances are, I may have already told you this years ago.

So, I forgot where the guy was from, either US or Canada, but I think from around the Great Lakes. Either way, he worked for the same company my brother used to work in Brazil, and they have factories in lots of different countries. In any case, a few years ago, both of them were in France and overheard some story of people getting killed by avalanches during winter. So the guy says "that's weird, where I'm from, they have patrols and equipment and they use dynamite to prevent avalanches that are serious enough to kill people, why don't they do it here, the tech is really simple?" and the French guy says essentially, "C'est la vie, they know it's risky, they go anyway, why should we have to pay to save their asses?" -- which makes me wonder if people in Europe in general are just so used to snow hosing everything that they don't care the country stops for a while.

And I'll join the other voices, I don't think even places in US have enough snow equipment to deal with storms except that they hire private people to work for them during emergencies. Because no matter how small the area they are talking about is (even if it's just England, for example, instead of UK), 500 plows seems a tad too little. Definitely they won't be done in a day or two.

[donnad.livejournal.com]

That's interesting, It's probably municipal snowplows, maybe for roads not owned by particular towns?
I doubt they are counting personal snowplows that individuals would have on their private vehicles. In my town here in MA. every other person has a pickup with a snowplow.

[karakara98.livejournal.com]

Interesting--Yesterday I met with my boss to prepare for a presentation I'm giving next week. He told me I needed to beef it up with some numbers, but that they had to be numbers that were in context and relevant. You've nicely reinforced the point that sharp people catch it when numbers don't quite make sense--even when they're true.

[railwaymadness]

Arlington, Va: 18 inches average annual snowfall, 70 pieces of snow control equipment, 312 miles of roads, $600,000 annual budget.
Minneapolis, Mn: 45 inches average annual snowfall, 100 pieces of snow control equipment, about 1500 miles of roads, $7 million annual budget.

My totally unscientific reading of wikipedia leads me to believe that the January weather in the UK is more similar to that in Atlanta and as far as I can tell, Atlanta occasionally deploys two sand trucks but doesn't admit to owning much of anything else.

Arlington, Va doesn't bother plowing if snowfall is less than four inches and the sun is going to shine. Since the vast majority of the populated UK areas has more days with snow falling than days with snow lying, I'm starting to think 500 plows might be totally reasonable.

[ravenzanne.livejournal.com]

Per the Seattle Times, from last year's storm - the City of Seattle had 27 "trucks" for plowing/sanding. It sure didn't seem like it. But like others have commented, we don't have the independent contractors to rely on. (Heck I don't even own a shovel) Thankfully no snow here this year.

[miss-chance.livejournal.com]

I think it's the "Private Contractors" that make snow-removal in MA work, and that makes a problem for other places... The state can't afford to (and would be foolish to) own and maintain the number of plows needed in case of the sort of snow load we get every 3 to 5 years. Talking out my ass, it would be easy to imagine that more MA residents own the medium- to heavy-duty pick-up trucks and other consumer-grade trucks capable of pushing a plow, than all UK residents combined. It's just a more common American-pastime, owning a big truck, than it is Brit, I think.

If you have a truck and a drive-way or garage, you can invest in a plow and get on the State call-list. It's kind of a brilliant system, even if the down-side is that it relies on our abhorrent love of gas-gusslers.

[allyphoe.livejournal.com]

The City of Tulsa has 37 snowplows and 58 spreaders (dump trucks that toss salt / sand mix out the back as they go - we get much more ice than snow). 400,000 residents, 182 square miles, with high road density. They make no attempt to plow or salt the neighborhoods, though - just the arterial roads and highways. Average days below freezing: 72. Average snowfall: 9 inches.

[whitebird.livejournal.com]

There is something like a "Somerville Magazine", kinda a glossy cover. Anyways, I was reading a part of it at lyonesse's house while out there, and the article I was reading was about snow removal in Somerville, Cambridge, and one other, similar, town.

I only vaguely remember numbers, but Somerville has somewhere between 30 and 60 pieces of snow removal equipment, and have a snow removal budget of about $340K. It is the one budget item that is allowed to go over as needed. Cambridge had somewhere between 50 and 85 pieces of snow removal equipment, and has a snow removal budget of about $500K. I forget the area figures and road mileage figures completely. I didn't finish the article, but it was pretty interesting. (It was nominally about the Somerville manager of snow removal.)

I bet you could figure out what magazine I'm speaking of and find it.

this annoyed me as well

[mryt-maat.livejournal.com]

I also have only a vague idea of how big England's road system is compared to, say, Oklahoma. I know how big the country is- but it would have been nice to know how many miles of road we are talking about. For instance- there are huge stretches of Alaska that have no roads to really speak of...they don't use plows for good reason.