That's cool if it snows every 7 or 8 yrs. In Santa Fe it snows several times
a year. For the taxes we paid there, which were a lot higher than in
Indiana, they damned well could plow the roads. The city of Fort Wayne
manages it just fine. Some parts of the US rarely get much snow, and other
areas (Indiana, northern New Mexico, etc) get it all winter long, every
year. Santa Fe is 400 yrs old, they KNOW it snows there every year, and it
snows HEAVILY there every year.
--
Chris Crawford
Photography & Graphic Design
Fort Wayne, Indiana
http://www.chriscrawfordphoto.com My portfolio
http://blog.chriscrawfordphoto.com My latest work!
http://www.plumpatrin.com Something the world NEEDS.
On 12/27/08 11:19 PM, "Rob Harrison" <robhar54@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Dec 27, 2008, at 3:51 PM, Chris Crawford wrote:
>
>> In Santa Fe, the city didn't bother to ever plow the
>> streets. People paid groups of Mexican men with shovels to dig out
>> their
>> driveways and the part of the street that goes past the house. It
>> cost $25
>> and took the men about 15 minutes to do it...they were very hard
>> workers but
>> made good money from it. Usually 4-5 guys worked together and could
>> do 3-4
>> houses an hour. 20-25 dollars an hour for each man. Considering that
>> it
>> snows in Santa Fe every winter and has done so for the last 400
>> years, you'd
>> think the city would have a more technologically advanced snow removal
>> method than "Immigrants with shovels". You know, like trucks with
>> plows!
>
>
> Actually, I think that is a *brilliant* solution that would work well
> here in Seattle and probably many other cities. We have a big
> snowstorm once every oh, seven or eight years, and when we do, there's
> a segment of the population that can't find anything more productive
> to do than to whine about how the city isn't prepared for snow, how we
> should salt the roads, have snowplows running down every side street,
> and so on. (Forgetting the cost of acquiring and maintaining all this
> carbon-spewing and/or nasty for Puget Sound stuff for the periods in
> between snow events.) I also like the idea that you're not only
> responsible for the sidewalk, but the street in front of your house.
> "Immigrants with shovels" is a low-tech, low-cost, distributed
> solution that is profitable for the workers, and (ultimately) solar
> powered. (Human energy is, after all, a form of solar energy.) We need
> more of that in the US.
>
> Rob in Seattle
--
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