Meghan Proctor ’16

The snow plows could have done a better job clearing the roads after last month’s blizzard. After the snow stopped falling, there was more than two feet of snow to clear from the roads. However, many main and residential roads did not get the help that was promised, and much of the snow was placed in areas that caused problems long after the roads became passable.

Some residential roads did not see any plows until days after the snowstorm passed. Residents were notified of deadlines for when their roads would get cleared, but that deadline was constantly pushed back as the system continued to move at a snail’s pace. This led people to remain trapped in their homes for much longer than acceptable. These residential roads may not have many people travel on them at once, and thus may receive less attention than the main roads, but until the long-delayed help from the snow plows arrived, many people were unable to go anywhere in the first place.

That being said, people experienced difficulty driving on the main roads as well. Lanes were blocked off with snow, and traffic slowed to a crawl. The snow cleared from the roads was placed in extremely inconvenient areas, not just in some lanes of the roads. Much of the snow was piled up on parking spaces, most notably spaces reserved for people with disabilities. This leaves these spaces unavailable until the last of the snow melts, which given the large amounts of snow piled on these spaces, simply cannot happen overnight.

Maryland does not get this much snow often, but the state government should have learned from their mistakes from Snowmageddon back in 2010, when many of these same issues occurred, and figured out a better way to respond in case a blizzard like that happened again. Not only that, but with the state aware of last month’s blizzard a week in advance, there should have been a better plan to set and stick to deadlines, plow snow from main and side roads more efficiently, and put the snow in places that wouldn’t cause problems weeks later, especially for people with disabilities.