Free Republic

his winter, New York won't be using electric snow plows. Failure of vehicle tests has caused the local snow removal company to revert to diesel-powered vehicles. The New York Department of Sanitation had three years ago, requested several Mack electric trucks. Primarily intended to clean streets and remove garbage, one of these trucks had been fitted with a snow plow as part of an experiment. This decision was unsurprising since in the "Big Apple", it's standard practice to fit garbage trucks with plows. The experiment was not successful. The plow, dragging across the road and the snow buildup in front...

Watching snow dance down to Earth on a winter’s eve is one of the season’s great treats. Whatever joy can be seized from such a sight, however, is almost immediately dashed the next morning if you find your street hasn’t been plowed. After all, a snowed-in road makes car travel all but impossible – a fact proven true when we trace the history of snowplows back to the beginning.How did people traverse the snow before plows? What happened when early snowplows weren’t enough? What does the subway have to do with any of this? Let’s clear a path to the...

It seems that these days most people understand the troubles that come with snow. But have you ever considered how it was done before we had hundreds of trucks and fancy plows? Imagine tackling this past winter only using shovels and horse-drawn equipment. It might make you appreciate just how far we’ve come with snow removal. So where do you even begin without the snow plows of today? Well just like how a horse would have been used on a farm, they had to drag plowing equipment. Needless to say this was incredibly tedious because the horses couldn’t push the...

Maine is having trouble finding enough snowplow drivers, another sign of the way low unemployment is taxing states. The state Department of Transportation has about 50 openings among about 700 positions and expects 30 snow storms in the season that stretches from mid-November to mid-April. Exacerbating the problem: some cities like Portland hire their own drivers and pay more, and private sector demand for experienced drivers is also high.

Stockholm’s “gender-equal” snow-clearing policy is not to blame for the traffic chaos which has engulfed the Swedish capital, the architect of the policy has claimed. “Gender-equal snow cleaning is not to blame here,” Daniel Helldén, the city’s Green Party transport head told the Expressen newspaper, stressing that the policy, which prioritizes cleaning pavements and cycle lanes over roads, did not even appear to have even been followed. […] Stockholm’s municipal government, a coalition of the Social Democrats and the Green Party, brought in gender equal snow cleaning last year, pledging to make moving around the city on icy winter days...

A fire has destroyed a fleet of snow plows in the small New Hampshire town of Henniker, as another storm approaches that could dump up to a foot more of snow. The fire broke out at the Henniker Highway Department on Friday night after the plows had finished clearing snow from the streets. The state fire marshal’s office said five dump trucks used as snow plows, one road grader and several other vehicles that were stored in the town garage were destroyed. The damage could exceed $1 million. “This puts the town in a bad spot,” Henniker Fire Chief Steve...

I dreamed of a white Christmas and woke up disillusioned with New Urbanism. We've had 23 inches of white so far this month in Milwaukee. By itself, this is nice. My days have not been merry and bright, however, and it's because of my alley. When we bought our house in an old neighborhood, we bought into the idea of alleys, or I did and I persuaded Mrs. McIlheran to go along. An alley meant a safer sidewalk, since cars wouldn't back out of driveways and run over our kids as they rode Big Wheels. A garage opening right onto...

Danes Prepare for Snow in Iraq Denmark's troops in Iraq may dream of the frost of a Scandinavian winter on days when the temperature rises to a blistering 46 degrees. But many may have been wondering if the military back home really had to rub it in when a recent supply shipment turned up a snowplough and a stock of salt for icy roads. Baking in the heat and dust outside Basra, the 380-odd Danes could have been forgiven for thinking the lawnmowers also included in the cargo were a mirage. "We admit that there were some mistakes made in...

<p>It has wet the whistles of Ligonier residents and visitors — even dogs and horses — for 82 years, but on Monday it became a casualty of the Presidents Day snowstorm.</p> <p>A decorative, cast-iron drinking fountain that has been a fixture for decades in Ligonier was demolished by a PennDOT grader that lost its brakes on North Market Street and slammed into The Diamond. The grader's snow blade broke the fountain in several pieces.</p>