In the early hours of the morning, when driving to work through a fresh layer of about 8 inches of snow, I saw something I had heard about but hadn’t ever seen until recently. Outside shop fronts owners were shovelling snow from the pavement, outside houses people were beginning to clear their driveways and the pavements in front of their home.
I’m in Cedar City, Utah and there is no law requiring people to clear the pavements in front of their properties (as is often rumoured when us Brits complain about our snow), but it is common practice here for two good reasons. Firstly, it means they are able to use their pavements, from which everyone benefits. And secondly, it saves on the city council services and money being absorbed on this task and that, instead, is able to be concentrated on keeping the roads clear.
Failure by the previous Governments to send a message out that people should help clear snow without fear of being sued (if a passerby slips) encouraged dependency on councils to do this when frankly they don’t have the money or resources. But when in winter 2009/10 WDC didn’t clear its carparks the for same reason it left us all bewildered. Does anyone honestly know of someone being sued for such an event? No? Excactly. They should be covered by the Good Samaritan Act anyway.
How many times each winter do you hear someone complain “in America they can cope with snow and the roads aren’t littered with potholes....”. Yes, here in Utah they regularly get more snow than in England and therefore it makes sense to dedicate more council resources to dealing with it. But there is a better use of money too. It’s not wasted on large amounts of salt (grit), as everybody knows this may stop small amounts of moisture on the road from freezing, but never has and never will stop the snow from falling there. Money is invested in snow ploughs, there are city snow ploughs dedicated to the service and also residents with 4x4s who can fit a plough to the front of their vehicle are contracted in when needed. And the potholes? They are here too and I suspect anywhere in the world where the temperature regularly fluctuates around the freezing marker. It’s as certain as life, death and taxes.
It’s not the responsibility of the local councils to clear all the snow from all the roads and all the pavements. They can’t make it ‘not winter’. But the two-tier system in Buckinghamshire is a cause of the problem; where one council is responsible for the roads and another for pavements; and where nobody really knows who looks after the county’s other footpaths, (because they’re generally not cared for) or the pedestrian high streets (they’re not really roads or pavements), the buck is too often passed between offices.
Buckinghamshire would benefit from a single authority that carries all the responsibility for keeping us moving in the winter, not least because the buck can’t be passed, but mainly because it can then go back to the drawing board, wipe out all the current failing plans and think again. They need to come forward with a firm policy of what people can and should expect their council to do, and just as important, what people need and should do themselves.
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