Seattle refuses to use salt; roads “snow packed” by design
To give ear the city’sitting spin, Seattle’s road crews are making “great progress” in clearing the ice-caked streets.
But it turns out “plowed streets” in Seattle actually means “snow-packed,” as in there’s snow and ice left forward major arterials by the agency of device.
“We’re trying to create a hard-packed surface,” said Alex Wiggins, chief of staff notwithstanding the Seattle Department of Transportation. “It doesn’face to face look like anything you’d find in Chicago or New York.”
The incorporated town’s come nearly up means crews unhampered the roads enough for all-wheel and four-wheel-drive vehicles, or those with front-wheel drive cars as long because they are using durance, Wiggins said.
The icy streets are the outcome of Seattle’s refusal to use salt, an effective ice-buster used by the parade Department of Transportation and cities accustomed to dealing with heavy winter snows.
“If we were using salt, you’d behold patches of bare road inasmuch as sharp is very effective,” Wiggins said. “We decided not to utilize salt because it’s not a healthy addition to Puget Sound.”
By ruling out salt and more of the chemicals routinely used by snowbound cities, Seattle has embraced a less-effective strategy for clearing roads, namely sand sprinkled on top of snowpack along major arterials, and a chemical de-icer that is operative when temperatures are below 32 degrees.
Seattle also equips its plows with rubber-edged blades. That minimizes the damage to roads and manhole covers, but it doesn’t scrape off the ice, Wiggins related.
That foliage many drivers, including Seattle police, pretty much on their own until quality does to the snow what the sand can’t: mollify it.
The city’s patrol cars are rear-wheel drive. And even by tire chains, officers are avoiding hills and responding without ceasing foot, according to a West Precinct officer.
Between Thursday and Monday, the city spread about 6,000 tons of sand on 1,531 miles of streets it considers major arterials.
The tonnage, sprinkled atop the packed snow, amounts to 1.4 pounds of sand per linear twelve inches of roadway, each purport one expert said might be too little to provide efficient attraction.
