Apparently, we're not the only ones that thinks the Illinois Policy Institute's new study rating Chicago's snowfighting service: See What They're Saying about Ready for the Snow? is important. The IPI posted this page:
2/16/2010
On February 16th, The Illinois Policy Institute released Ready for the Snow? , an in depth report grading Chicago's snow removal efforts. Here is a sample of what others are saying about the report:Associated Press: Chicago Says It Could Have Handled East Coast Storm
An Associated Press story ran in several publications including the Chicago Sun-Times and News Oklahoma , mentions the Institute's snow removal study, in which we give the city of Chicago an 'A' for their snow removal efforts in the wake of a storm that dropped over a foot of snow on the city.
NBC Chicago: Chicago Makes Snow Removal Honor Roll
NBC Chicago references the Institute's comprehensive study on Chicago's snow removal efforts.
The Salt Institute: Judging Snowfighting Performance
The Salt Institute calls the Illinois Policy Institute's work "outstanding advocacy on behalf of winter safety and mobility."
The Huffington Post: Chicago Snow Clearing Grades: 'A' For Main Roads, 'B+' For Side Streets
The Huffington Post discusses our snow report and the improvements in snow removal that it points to from January to February.
WAND-TV: Snow Removal Means Overtime for City Workers
WAND-TV discusses the cost of snow removal and the 'A' rating the city received in our review of their snow removal services.
Chicagoist: Chicago to East Coast: Your Snow Removal Sucks
The Chicagoist compares Chicago's snow removal efforts, and the 'A' grade it received in our report, to the removal efforts of east coast cities.
For generations, assessing snowfighter performance was a virtual monopoly for transportation and public works professionals, with "purse-string-holders" looking over their shoulder. The public might be happy ... or not, but for the most part, they tolerated delinquent or poor quality service.
There were exceptions to be sure. Chicago mayor Michael Bilandic's infamous snowfighting glitch that ended his electoral career is only the most prominent example. Highway users, roadway safety groups and taxpayer advocates, however, were generally patient as crews struggled heroically to clear away ice and snow.
That may be changing. Media headlines in the hard-hit DC area have included: "Snow paralysis has cost too much " and "Mayor Fenty fails the snow test ."
DC isn't the only place it's snowed, however. Today, the Illinois Policy Institute released a report assessing snowfighting effectiveness in Chicago; it is entitled "Ready for the Snow? Gauging Illinois’s performance on a critical core service ." After recounting the Bilandic episode, the report continues:
People expect clear roads during wintertime – and they want the roads cleared in a timely fashion. If government fails to meet expectations, it does not go unnoticed. In the winter of 2008-2009, Chicago cut overtime services, leaving side roads iced over for days.
Chicagoans were not happy. For the 2009-2010 winter season, Mayor Richard Daley outlined plans to avoid previous mistakes and has committed to keeping the roads safe and clear. Chicago’s Street and Sanitation Department’s 2009 personnel budget for snow removal is $6 million.
The Illlinois Policy Institute report makes a strong defense of snowfighting investments and quotes approvingly from agencies around the state with high levels of winter road maintenance service.
Budgeting for snow removal sits near the top of the priority list for local governments around Illinois; Sangamon County Highway Engineer Tim Zahrn noted, “That’s the first thing we budget for; that’s our primary responsibility.” Officials in the state capital city of Springfield say they “will deploy whatever resources are needed on a storm-by-storm basis.”
IPI calls for new performance standards for snow and ice control operations.It’s no secret snow causes car accidents.
According to the Federal Highway Administration, every year the following occurs:
- 24 percent of weather-related vehicle crashes occur on snowy, slushy or icy pavement.
- 15 percent of weather-related vehicle crashes happen during snowfall or sleet.
- Over 1,300 people are killed and more than 116,800 people are injured in vehicle crashes on snowy, slushy or icy pavement.
Budgeting for road clearing during winter season is a top priority and major budget item for state and local government. Preparation is key for combating winter storms, and once the storm arrives, local and state governments need to hold themselves accountable by implementing snow removal performance standards. In order to measure snow removal standards, state and local governments can set up a metric system to gauge good or poor performance.
And the metric it endorses is truly cast in terms of delivering service on winter roads for roadway users.
- How well was snow removal and salting maintained during the snowstorm?
- How many accidents occurred because of weather conditions?
- How was travel time affected because of the snow?
- At which point were main and side roads clear after the snowstorm stopped?
These are the very questions that snowfighting managers have been grappling with for years. It's nice to see the public paying more attention to its snowfighting investment -- usually the largest single roadway operating budget item for a snowbelt road agency.
Congratulations to the Illinois Policy Institute for its outstanding advocacy on behalf of winter safety and mobility.
With the record-setting snowfall in the DC area this winter, hard on the heels of the embarrassment of ClimateGate, global warming proponents have been rather defensive of late. Among the most outspoken evangelicals has been Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., a lawyer associated with the Natural Resources Defense Council.
A Washington Examiner story recently quoted liberally from Kennedy's global warming warnings during the 2008 presidential campaign. Kennedy wrote an op ed in the LA Times concerning his long acquaintance with weather in the nation's capital:
Snow is so scarce today that most Virginia children probably don't own a sled. But neighbors came to our home at Hickory Hill nearly every winter weekend to ride saucers and Flexible Flyers.
In those days, I recall my uncle, President Kennedy, standing erect as he rode a toboggan in his top coat, never faltering until he slid into the boxwood at the bottom of the hill. Once, my father, Atty. Gen. Robert Kennedy, brought a delegation of visiting Eskimos home from the Justice Department for lunch at our house. They spent the afternoon building a great igloo in the deep snow in our backyard. My brothers and sisters played in the structure for several weeks before it began to melt. On weekend afternoons, we commonly joined hundreds of Georgetown residents for ice skating on Washington's C&O Canal, which these days rarely freezes enough to safely skate.
Meanwhile, Exxon Mobil and its carbon cronies continue to pour money into think tanks whose purpose is to deceive the American public into believing that global warming is a fantasy.
With more than four feet of non-fantasized snow on the ground, igloos in many yards, skaters on the Georgetown canal and myriad sleds and toboggans miraculously appearing, you'd think Kennedy would be embarrassed. Don't bet on it. This is the say guy who argued that a proposed saltworks at San Ignacio lagoon on the Pacific coast of Mexico's Baja would remove so much salt from the ocean that newborn whale calves would find insufficient buoyancy to float and would perish. Underlining the importance of educating the public about salt production, his specious appeal raised more than $100 million, some of which was used to bludgeon proposers of the new saltworks. Truthful, no. But without apology or shame.
Analyses of the economic devastation of snowfalls that paralyze roadway systems confirm the value of effective snowfighting -- and its cost-effectiveness. HIstorical studies were reinforced with the record snowfalls that hit the DC metro area last week. A Wells Fargo analyst told the Wall Street Journal's Marketwatch :
Some spending increased because of the storms. More money was spent to remove snow, and to repair structures damaged by the ice and snow. Sales of snow shovels and parkas increased. Snow can be a stimulus.
On the other hand, some activity was lost forever. "The losses are real," said Mark Vitner, an economist for Wells Fargo Securities. People who were snowed in won't buy an extra lunch when they get back to work, and they won't park their car twice.
Winter storms are more disruptive than damaging.
"The February numbers are going to be a mess," Vitner said. "It's a downer, but how much of a downer, we don't know." Employment, hours worked, wages and retail sales could decline sharply in February, only to rebound in March, if history is any guide. That movement will mostly reflect the timing of the snapshots of economic activity, and not a fundamental shift in the economy's direction.
And a Deutsche Bank economist added:
Economist Joe LaVorgna of Deutsche Bank figures a snow storm in the survey week lowers payrolls by an average of 90,000 compared with the trend line.
For instance, payrolls fell by a seasonally adjusted 51,000 in March 1993 when the "storm of the century" lashed the Midwest and East during the survey week. Employment was strong before and after the storm. In February before the storm, payrolls had risen by 309,000; in April, payrolls rose by 250,000. The average workweek fell by 0.6% in March.
The 1993 storm also had an impact on seasonally adjusted retail sales, which sank 0.7% in March, only to rise 2.2% in April. Housing starts were also bruised by the 1993 storm, falling more than 10% in March and rising more than 16% in April.
During the blizzard of 1996, payrolls fell by 19,000 in January, and then rebounded by 434,000 in February. Average hours fell by 1.2%, the fourth largest decline on record. The three largest declines in hours worked were also due to severe winter storms.
The UK's Food Standards Agency has made since-disproven claims to have achieved population sodium reduction. This week FSA and the Department of Health rolled out a new National Diet and Nutrition Survey .
The NDNS promises to use 24-hour urine samples (UNaV) to measure population sodium intakes -- the approach advocated by the Salt Institute in place of the dietary recall surveys FSA used to claim an overall sodium reduction. But, surprise, the results apparently didn't confirm the rosy projections of the press office. The report is silent on sodium with the excuse that "results from the urine analysis are not included in the current report as the sample size for year one is too small to report."
Not to worry, scientists have reviewed the data already -- and published an analysis that documents no reduction in sodium intake . So, Britons are safe from their government's mindless meddling -- at least for now. Last Fall, researchers reported in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology:
UNaV and, thus, dietary sodium intake has varied minimally in the UK over the 25 yr encompassing these surveys. The mean sodium intake over the time period 1984 to 2008 was 150 mmol/d. Second, more than 6300 subjects, many providing multiple samples, are the source of these 24 h UNaV measurements from a variety of regions of the UK and Ireland, and they fall within a relatively narrow range.
Not shown, but assessed by us, was the individually determined mean and range of UNaV for women and men where the gender breakdown was available from the survey. Sodium intake for women was 129. Likewise, male sodium intake, which included a 1982 survey of only men living in London, was constant over the same period, although, as would be expected on a caloric basis, higher than that of women, 169.4. The male and female analyses excluded the three Intersalt sites, as the published data provided only the mean for the combined cohort. This statistical analysis of all available 24 h UNaV from the UK does not support recent FSA pronouncements that their national campaign directed at sodium reduction has achieved a significant reduction in the population.
Perhaps the next NDNS will "find" the urinary data these other scientists have already reported in the peer-reviewed literature.
The Mayor Bloomberg initiative (grandiosly referred to as the National Salt Reduction Program), possibly dreamed up by activist groups and leveraged through cronies at New York's health department and their friends at health commission offices around the country, reminds me of something I wrote some time back when I did the history of “Typhoid Mary.” It concerns the abuse of power exercised by Boards of Health and Health Commissions who feel they can, without fear of repercussion, dispense with civil rights in order to execute policies, even if there is no solid evidence to support them. In doing so, these bureaucrats make the self-indulgent leap from civil servants to civil masters without any permission from those they swore to serve.
The quote I am reminded of was by Dr. Josephine Baker, the person who first managed to take 'Typhoid' Mary Mallon into custody. Everyone else looked at Mary's decades-long illegal detention with a clear conscience after her death in custody. Only Dr. Baker spoke up and soberly stated what Mary, a poor Irish immigrant, was up against.
“Typhoid Mary made me realize for the first time what sweeping powers are vested in Public Health authorities. There is very little that a Board of Health cannot do in the way of interfering with personal and property rights for the supposed protection of the public health. Boards of Health have judicial, legislative and executive powers... There have been many typhoid carriers recognized since her time, but she was the first charted case and for that distinction she paid in a life-long imprisonment.”
We see the same mindless, hob-nail boot trampling going on with salt today. C.S. Lewis once said, "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive... those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
A muddle of disingenuous advocates, ambitious civil servants and politicians, operating with manipulated evidence, has chosen salt reduction as their cause célèbre. These make-believe crusaders are infused with thought, “Focus on the journey, not the destination.”
Unfortunately, for the public there is a destination, and it is their freedoms and their health.
The former president of Canada's largest science based regulatory agency, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, cautioned the public recently: "Don't be fooled. Science is always politicized." Ronald Doering argues in the National Post that we should not expect scientists to put aside their policy biases nor confess using their scientific credentials as participants in the policy arena:
That scientists should dress up their science advice as pure neutral science is understandable. For those with scientific expertise, it makes perfect sense to wage political battles through science because it necessarily confers to scientists a privileged position in political debate.
But, does it? Must we lower our high expectations that scientific experts can give us the "straight scoop" without injecting their personal policy preferences to bias their "scientific findings"? I think we can expect more from scientists. Dumbing down our sensibilities in considering scientific studies would result in substituting our own, non-expert biases and thwart progress in embracing new understandings of the reality of the world around us. Count us pro-science.
What can be said of the charge, then, that scientists have biases and their work can only be considered as a political statement? The scientific method is value-neutral. Every scientific study recognizes that the investigator has a "bias" in that the hypothesis to be tested is proposed because the scientist thinks it may offer explanatory value. It is the method itself that will save science from the bias towards confirming the hypothesis. The key here is to get agreement on the quality standards for performing the study and analyzing the results. Those, like Dr. Doering, so insist that we prioritize our understanding of "how policy is scientized and science is politicized" suggest that there is no consensus on standards of scientific inquiry. That's just plain wrong.
A generation ago, the late Dr. Archie Cochrane at Oxford University confronted this question: that scientists seemed to be reaching differing conclusions from the same body of evidence and he devised procedures that grew into the global "evidence-based medicine" movement currently promoted by his eponymous Cochrane Collaboration .
The critical component of evidence-based science is the rigorous separation of method and data. The method must be set out first and the data then gathered and analyzed using that method. It's the opposite of choosing the analytic method after the data have been examined to "discover" that the post-hoc hypothesis is confirmed.
I'm recently returned from the India-International Salt Summit in India and so my eye caught the news that, in the wake of ClimateGate, India has withdrawn from the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). India's environmental minister, Jairam Ramesh, was quoted observing: "There is a fine line between climate science and climate evangelism. I am for climate science."
For more than two decades, back to at least 1988 when the Intersalt Study was published, we've seen the same "theological" threat to science in the salt and health controversy. In fact, the shenanigans of the salt reductionist advocacy groups give theology a bad name. It's just the dogmatic rejection of science showing no general health benefit from salt reduction and even the futility of the public health campaign to alter salt intake levels once they are the the range that 90+% of the world's population ingests (the U.S. is right smack in the middle of this intake range).
So, we stand with Mr. Ramesh: we're for nutrition science and not nutrition evangelism in the salt and health debate.
The debate over salt and health continues to wallow at low levels of evidence: opinion or, at best, only observational outcomes studies (with one exception: a randomized trial showing that heart failure patients put on low salt diets suffered worse outcomes).
As a result, the Salt Institute, Grocery Manufacturers Association and many leading researchers are calling for a controlled trial of the health outcomes of the current policy of promoting salt reduction for everybody.
But while the salt controversy simmers, medical scientists are "moving on," recognizing that even well-designed randomized trials (RCTs) can produce results that can mislead policy decisions. TheHeart.org recently carried Sue Hughes' admonition to insist on "clinically significant" RCTs. Hughes summarizes an article in the February 2 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology by Drs. Sanjay Kaul and George Diamond. That issue of JACC also contains an instructive article by Gregg W. Stone and Stuart J. Pocock on the same subject: the clinical significance of RCTs.
So, while salt reduction advocates want us to turn a blind eye to the conceded fact that six of the eight subgroups in the DASH-Sodium trial had no statistically-significant blood pressure improvement (and those subgroups would represent the overwhelming majority of the general public), the discussion in JACC is that statistical significance is not even enough: the findings also need to make a clinical difference. We read "clinical difference" to mean improved outcomes, not simply plausible theoretical modeling results.
Something public health nutrition policy-makers should consider.
Everyone's talking about jobs. But while flipping burgers may be better than sitting at home collecting unemployment benefits, the foundation for renewed economic growth in the United States isn't creating more government jobs, it's revitalizing manufacturing.
The National Association of Manufacturers recently released a must-read primer on the role of manufacturing,Manufacturing Resurgence A Must for U.S. Prosperity by Joel Popkin and Kathryn Kobe. The report documents that "manufacturing contributes more to U.S. productivity than an other major sector."
An amendment just incorporated into a pending New Hampshire legislative bill seeking to create pathbreaking mandatory certification of snowfighters would exempt those who apply about 80% of the road salt in that state. That's bad public policy.
True, private sector snowfighters need more and better training, but so do those who labor in public employ to keep our winter roads safe and passable.
Today is Groundhog Day and Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow -- a "reliable" indicator that there will be six more weeks of winter weather.
Harold Alderman of the World Bank estimates the payback for investments in iodizing salt to return between $12 and $30 for every dollar invested. The study was just published in the Journal of Developmental Origins of Health and Disease
. Iodizing salt was judged superior to supplementing vitamin A and zinc, doing general community nutrition education or doing iron fortification.
Alderman laments the fact that "economic investments often fail to follow from evidence...Quite possibly economists believe that rapid economic growth will, by itself, will eliminate undernutrition. If so, they are mistaken in that belief." Growth, he documents has only a "modest impact."
Investment patterns are politically-determined and over-invest in HIV/AIDS and injuries "while non-communicable disease as well as maternal and perinatal health and nutrition along with non HIV/AIDS communicable diseases receive less than they should according to calculated health benefits.
Even casual observers of road salt operations in the North American snowbelt recognize that most of the salt used to keep winter roads safe and passable is applied by public agencies. And for a half century, there has been consensus that over-application of road salt imposes unnecessary environmental costs. That's why the Salt Institute has been promoting "Sensible Salting" for more than 40 years -- application of the minimum amount of salt needed to achieve desired levels of service. Sensible Salting has been the mainstay of employee training programs for decades. Sensible Salting has won public service awards.
Snowfighter training is the key to improved salt management. Every state has a federally-subsidized Local Technology Assistance Program and snowbelt state LTAPs offer training to government and private snowfighters on how to do the job right. Problem: some agencies and contractors skimp (or even ignore) training. As a result, their application of road salt doesn't reflect best management practices. Training has always been voluntary and, as a result, inconsistent. That's the case in every state, not just New Hampshire whose motto famously proclaims "Live free or die."
New Hampshire Rep. Margaret Crisler (R-Rockingham) wants to convert the inconsistent voluntary approach and force snowfighter training throughout the state. We support the intent to improve snowfighter training, though this legislative vehicle has problems.
Rep. Crisler, at the request of the Department of Environmental Services (DES), has introduced HB 1676 to require certification of all snowfighters except homeowners and business owners who are putting salt on their own property. The bill enjoys support from the entire state bureaucracy, DES (which would draft the certification standards and enforce the program), the department of transportation, the department of safety and the department of resources and economic development. But these state departments, perhaps also reflecting municipalities throughout the state, insist that state and municipal snowfighters be exempted from the certification requirement . In other words, the guy with the pick-up truck putting out hundreds of pounds of salt on a shopping center or office complex parking lot would pay fees and be required to certify their operators, but the NH DOT and the municipal crews that operate the large plow/spreader trucks that spread the vast majority of the salt would be exempted.
Live free or die?
The House Resources, Recreation and Development Committee is scheduled to vote on the bill February 4. A couple part-time DES employees would be required to develop and administer the certification program, the DES estimated (before insisting the bill be confined only to private contractors).
Want to register your views ?
Also of note: hidden deep in the bill is a provision limiting the liability of property owners who employ best salt management practices.
Lee Smithson, the coordinator for AASHTO's Snow and Ice Cooperative Program (SICOP) has announced that TRB has posted to its website five technical papers considered to be "Practice Ready"
. They include
#1. "Guidance for Creating and Maintaining Written Snow and Ice Control Plan and Policy Documents". This paper begins on page 287 of E-C126. The paper discusses the importance, benefits, creation process and suggested content of written snow and ice control plan and policy documents for all levels of government. It also cites the experience and success of three diverse agencies to highlight the importance and utility of the documents. The paper is comprehensive and presents subject matter to guide agencies in the development of their plan and policy documents.
#2. "Providing Winter Road Maintenance Guidance, An Update of the Federal Highway Administration Maintenance Decision Support System". This paper begins on page 199 of E-C126. This paper provides an overview of the development of the Federal Prototype MDSS. It documents the five versions of the Federal Prototype that have been developed and released and the enhancement of the Rules of Practice based on field demonstrations, the addition of more chemicals types to the treatment recommendations, a frost module, etc. The paper acknowledges the importance of stakeholders and the incorporation of their feedback into the features and functions that now make up the current version of the MDSS.
#3. "Maintenance Decision Support System is not Just for State Departments of Transportation". This paper begins on page 240 of E-C126. This paper presents the use of MDSS in a county and city application. Excellent success is reported and it is anticipated they will expand MDSS to their summer operations. A study has been started to determine the direct and indirect benefits of MDSS.
#4. "An Overview of Implementation and Deployment of the Pooled Fund Study Maintenance Decision Support System". This paper begins on page 229 of E-C126. The paper describes the development of the pooled fund study (PFS) MDSS. This pooled fund has been guided by ten state DOTs and therefore accommodates a wide range of operating practices and deployment options.
#5. "Integrating Weather into Transportation Operations: A Utah Department of Transportation Case Study". This paper begins on page 318 of E-C126. The paper describes the Utah DOT Weather Operations/RWIS Program and a research project to determine how its services were being used to change and improve business practices. The project included surveys of Utah DOT maintenance foremen and construction engineers and quantitative benefit/cost analysis based on data collected regarding winter maintenance activities and outcomes.
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