I just sent the following to the Atlanta Journal with the subject: My snow plant - Stay home! I have a much simpler plan for dealing with any future winter precipitation in the metro Atlanta area. Simply, don’t open the schools, when the forecast calls for any form of winter precipitation. Don’t just close them early. That simple step would have removed school buses from the roads, kept concerned parents off of the streets, and allowed road crews better access to the roads. We don’t get icy conditions often enough that officials should be concerned about students losing a day of classes. The plan that has been discussed after this storm, of sending students home first, then businesses, then government simply spreads the volume of traffic over a longer period of time, and still exposes people to risks that, frankly, should not be taken in our southern communities. That plan still has the potential of leaving more people stranded in their cars on icy roads, as they are only allowed to leave work, in a staggered release. In fact, it could be more dangerous, as more students could then be stranded in cold cars on icy streets, with limited supplies, instead of in the safety of their own homes. I would also recommend that government officials be proactive and make public announcements requesting that businesses close early, or better yet, not open at all, when ice is forecasted as well. Encourage the use of the telecommuting options more, during severe winter weather. This would further reduce the volume of traffic on the streets, and allow road crews and emergency responders much better access to the roads to open things up more quickly. If the forecast turns out to be wrong, everything can return to normal on the following day. However, if the forecasts turn out to be correct, as they were in this event, everybody would be much safer, and the recovery can be carried out in a much more efficient manner. Anything that can reduce the amount of traffic, ahead of, and during a winter storm, can improve conditions, attitudes, and tempers much more effectively and quickly, with much less cost than any other plan I’ve heard. It can also give the people that need to be on the streets, such as emergency responders, and road crews the best chances to do their jobs as well. While the northern parts of the country may laugh at us for shutting down, in the face of even a threat of even a light amount of winter precipitation, that would be a much better plan than having to use limited resources on rescuing people from potential life threatening situations of being stuck on icy roads, far from home. It would probably mean that everyone could return to their jobs much more quickly as well, once the storm has passed, because the equipment that was purchased since 2011 could actually be put into use. A proactive approach that keeps as many cars off of the streets, before the arrival of winter weather, instead of a reactive approach of staggering the release of cars onto the roads that still puts people in harm’s way is, in my view, a much better approach for our area. In an area that is dependent on car travel as much as metro Atlanta is for transportation, with the small number of mass transit options that are available, the more cars that are off the streets in a storm, the better. People should take this week’s storm and the storm of 2011 as a lesson, to stay home.
Posted on: Thu, 30 Jan 2014 16:15:15 +0000
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