For clearing our streets and we have very little to show for it.
Supposedly they have been clearing the main arteries.... which ones? All the streets pretty much suck with one reasonably cleared lane and the other lane is crap.
Skelley Drive is a nightmare - no sand or salt at all.
I don't get it, school roads are not cleared or sanded.
I think they should have to account for the hours spent and where exactly the sand and salt went. It sure didn't go on our streets.
If this is not unacceptable to the city - it should be. Broken Arrow managed to clear it's streets. I know Tulsa is bigger - but Tulsa don't even have the same amount of clearing done percapita.
Ok, off my soap box....
Tulsa was trying to clear with it's plow equipment, which is incapable of breaking through the ice. They have gone to using road graders but do not have access to many.
I have been all over town and have seen plenty of sand, it's getting tracked away at this point though. Tulsa doesn't have the space or resources to stockpile enough for every road in the city. Also keep in mind that the mix we use of sand and salt will not clear a roadway. It is meant to add traction and aid in the breakup of snow and ice. It is not meant for road clearing. If we dumped enough salt to clear 3" thick ice, your bumper would rust off tomorrow.
From the City of Tulsa website:
"Street crews continued to work long shifts and overtime Wednesday. From midnight to noon Wednesday, Public Works employees treated 3,045 lane miles of arterial streets and 755 miles of non-arterials. They applied 735 tons of sand and salt and plowed more than 1,900 miles of arterial streets.
"Since the storm hit Tulsa last Friday, street crews have worked 1,325 regular hours and 5,601 overtime hours. They have treated 20,607 lane-miles of arterials and 1,744 miles of non-arterials, as well as plowing nearly 24,000 lane-miles. They have applied nearly 9,000 tons of salt and sand.
"As soon as streets are dry enough to sweep, the City's street-sweeping contractors will begin removing sand."
Yet another argument for limiting urban sprawl. By the way, I was in Oklahoma City yesterday (you know, the city of over 600 square miles) and they haven't even come close to doing as well as Tulsa in clearing off streets!
There is no good way to clear off ice on a massive scale. I was in a similar storm about eight years ago in the St. Louis area. All they could really do was lay down as much salt as they could and hope for a warm spell. It was finally gone in two weeks.
Could you imagine clearing 3" of ice off every street in Tulsa with 50 trucks? No way. They've done the best job they could do and I've had no trouble getting around.
Wait a week or so when the whining begins about the cost of all that clearing. It will be another hit to the City's budget.
I lived in Greenville, SC for five years. My last year there we suffered through a 2-3" ice storm. There were maybe two trucks... maybe. It took five days to have a decent enough portion of the roads cleared. You want to know why? Because three days after the storm the temperature was averaging twenty degrees above freezing. Frankly, Tulsa is much more prepared than most cities.
BTW, please avoid mentioning in this conversation what New York, Chicago, Detroit, or Boston would and can do. They are northern cities... they face this kind of weather on a yearly (sometimes monthly, during the winter seasons) basis.