Pittsburgh pastime: grouching on snow removal
Tradition has continued over past 40 years
It may seem like Mayor Bill Peduto is taking an unprecedented level of heat for his city’s icy roads, but Pittsburghers have always complained about snow on their streets.
Whining over road conditions is a tradition in Pittsburgh that has continued over at least five mayoral administrations dating back four decades, from a letter to Richard Caliguiri in 1978 to Mr. Peduto’s Twitter account this week.
“We will do better. We will provide our workers with additional resources. We will provide better communication with our residents to assure safe streets,” he tweeted Tuesday.
It’s a trend that Mr. Peduto might take solace in, especially after facing several days of criticism from residents who allege the city has been slow in responding to the recent stretch of snowy and icy weather.
The mayor on Tuesday pledged to do a “much better job” in snow removal, while city officials blamed some of the poor conditions on a partially depleted staff and a challenging combination of cold, snow and ice.
But on Wednesday, Mr. Peduto was still receiving messages on Twitter like, “These roads are trash,” and “Been a city resident since 1981 and have seen some snowy winters. Never have I witnessed service this poor.”
But on Feb. 12, 1978, during Mr.Caliguiri’s time in office, a Brookline resident wrote to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: “Everyone thinks former Mayor Pete Flaherty did such a great job with salting and plowing the streets ... Poor Mayor Richard Caliguiri has to listen to everyone’s complaints because he happens to be mayor during this time of record-breakingsnow.”
Then there was the stretch of snow and cold weather in March 1989, when Mayor Sophie Masloff’s staff had to quell concerns over low temperatures rendering road salt ineffective. Sound familiar? (Peduto administration officials cited the same concerns thisweek.)
At the time, Dolly Campbell, manager of Ms. Masloff’s service center, said the city was working as hard as it could to address complaints about snow and icecovered streets, which resulted from a “doublewhammy snowstorm that blanketed Pittsburgh,” according to a March 7 story in the Post-Gazette.
Mayor Tom Murphy couldn’t escape the criticism during his time in office from 1994 to 2006. During a town hall in 1994, he pledged that the city would do its best to reach the more than 1,000 miles of city streets within two days of snowfall — rhetoric the current administration echoed this week. Mr. Murphy even shuffled the order in which neighborhood streets were plowed.
Seemingly no one faced more dissatisfaction than Mayor Luke Ravenstahl, who supervised the city’s reaction to a harsh series of winter stormsin February 2010 while trapped at Seven Springs celebrating his 30th birthday. A Feb. 10 letter to the editor in the Post-Gazette from a Scott resident asked, “Mayor Ravenstahl,what gives?”
“I proceeded to drive from Scott through Mt. Lebanon and Dormont to Brookline. It was like night and day the difference in the roads,” the resident wrote. “It was fine until I got to the city limits. Brookline Boulevard was ice- and snow-covered and so was the city part of West Liberty Avenue.”
Mr. Ravenstahl said he would order a review of “how we can work better with other agencies” on snow removal.
This isn’t even the first time Mr. Peduto has taken blame for road conditions. Reviews left on the city’s Facebook page criticized snow removal operations after storms in December 2013, January 2015and January 2016.
“This is a disgrace! We have known about this small snow storm for a few days and still the city cannot be prepared and salt the roads,” one from2013 read, continuing the time-honoredtradition.