The End of Snow Days
I loved snow days as a kid.
If I saw even one snowflake fall from the sky, I would go to bed hoping, praying that 10 billion of its friends would follow. That meant school would be cancelled the next day. It meant I could strap on my snow pants, gloves and hat, and spend the day outside with my friends. We made snow angels in the fluffy white powder and packed big piles of the stuff into snow forts. An entire day of Recess.
We never saw the dark side of snow. We saw only fun.
These days, my affection for snow days has melted. Mostly because we don’t really get “snow days” as adults, and if we do it means things are bad. So bad that you probably can’t get to the grocery store or to the doctor’s office.
As I write this, the East Coast is getting pummeled by an icy snow queen named Lexi. It’s the second major winter storm in two weeks, shutting down roads and schools, and cancelling more than 500 flights. It’s not the kind of snow day you hope to have. It’s an angry, violent winter assault. Cars skid off the road. People die.
The Great Lakes and South are bracing for an arctic blast over the next few days. In some ways, this worries me even more than the east coast storms. Areas like my hometown of Detroit, Mich. are used to snow; we have the equipment and protocols for clearing it. That’s not always the case in southern cities like St. Louis, Nashville or Atlanta. Remember the Gulf Coast Winter Storm of 2014?
In some ways, I can understand the lack of preparation in these cities. Georgia doesn’t have enough snow plows because it almost never snows there; the state’s budget is better spent investing in things like hurricane-preparedness, which frequently threatens the gulf coast.
Even for cities that are prepared for snow, it’s a struggle. Here in Detroit I often complain about how slow our snow removal process seems. And we have a pretty good process. But if you live in the neighborhoods or suburbs it can take days for your street to be plowed.
These issues can be compounded by the density of a given city. Massachusetts had more than 3,000 crews working to clear the roads in the most recent storm, and Boston alone had more than 400 snow plows fighting the snow.
But still, shouldn’t we be able to get the roads cleared without calling the National Guard for help?
There are some folks doing it right. I took a trip up to Montreal a couple years ago and witnessed their snow removal magic firsthand. It looks a lot like this:
The snow-eating monsters move slowly, but they make quick work of clearing the roads. Quebec can clear all its streets of snow (up to 7-inches) overnight.
Norway staffs its Oslo airport with a snow removal team, who can clear the runways in under 15 minutes to make sure flights don’t get delayed because of snow.
Those are all great in theory, and they seem to be highly effective in practice. But these kinds of programs require significant investment in infrastructure, equipment and manpower. They’re expensive. Who’s going to pay for that?
There should be a way for everyone to have snow removal when they need it, without cities taxing the bejeezus out of our residents and without sacrificing hurricane or tornado or earthquake preparedness for blizzard preparedness.
Here’s an interesting thought: we could do it ourselves.
I don’t mean that every person should pick up a shovel and start scooping snow, although we could. In Germany, residential roads are the responsibility of citizens; municipalities only clear the main streets.
Tech savvy citizens can hire someone to shovel their snow for them. Search Craigslist for “snow removal services” and you’ll find a range of offerings with prices all over the map — from $20 up to $150 — presumably depending on the size of the job and whether it’s a kid with a shovel or a team with professional grade equipment. But private snow removal services have been around for years, this isn’t anything new. When it starts to collide with the on-demand economy, though, that’s where things start to get interesting.
Plowz and Mowz is an on-demand snow plowing and lawn cutting app, currently operating in about 30 cities around the country. It’s Uber for snow removal. You request a job, select a service provider from a map of your area, and get a photo sent to your phone when the work is completed.
Currently, the service is only offered for driveways and front walks, and on the provider side it does require that you have professional grade equipment and $1,000 in general liability insurance. But what if you don’t have professional grade snow blowing equipment?
Maybe you just have a kickass personal snow blower, or a plow on the front of your pickup. If you had extra time and wanted to make some extra cash, couldn’t you help clear the streets in your neighborhood? Or the neighborhood adjacent to yours?
It’s an infant industry; there’s plenty of opportunity to carve out your own slice of this pie that’s worth $55.3 million a year in New York City alone.
This turns the current dynamic of snow removal on its head. Instead of the city prioritizing which roads to clear when, or using a grid to organize their plow routes, we give individuals the power to determine which streets they want to use (by deciding which ones they’d pay to plow).
At this stage, it’s an imperfect solution. Maybe it leaves you with more questions than answers. Could someone without professional equipment really make a dent in 28 inches of snow blanketing your entire street?
I think about it less in terms of equipment and more in terms of manpower and opportunity. We may only be able to employ 3,000 crews to work full time on snow removal, but what if that number could temporarily be boosted to 50,000 when we need it? It could be the end of snow days.
My ten-year old self would hate it. But my 32-year old self really needs to get to the office.
