Snow in Pennsylvania

I must begin this blog with a disclaimer: I am originally from Maryland.

When it snows in PA, driving becomes an adventure. Getting to work on time is the luck of the draw, even when leaving early. One never knows if the road traveled will be cleared or snow covered. I am amazed at the randomness of snow removal. For example, about 1/2 a mile from my house is an intersection with a traffic signal. If I turn left, I can travel to Lancaster City. If I go straight, I can travel to Willow Street (it is a town). However, after a snow, I can not turn right because there seems to be an invisible line that tells the snow plowers to lift up the plow and leave those poor souls snowed in. I know there are townships with their different budgets for snow removal, but seriously, the road goes from dry to 3 inches of snow right at that intersection.

On the way into the city, there is an intersection in which half of it is plowed and bone dry while the other half is an obstacle course (this is beside the maintanence building for the city!).  Further up on Queen street, where Manheim Township must clear snow, I felt like my car was going to be shaken apart from the ruts in the road. To add to the fun, people believe snow on the road means park where ever one's car stops. If that means in the middle of the street, so be it. And, who started the tradition of putting a chair on the street to hold your spot?

This morning, as I slid through some intersections and avoided the cars parked five feet from the curb, I had an additional problem: not all the sidewalks are cleared properly, so the students were walking in the street! How dangerous is that? It felt like that crazy 1970's movie in which, in the future, there is a road game in which points are earned by how many people are run over by the racers. So elderly people were wheeled into the highway and the racers got points for hitting them. Instead of elderly people, I had the option of hitting multiple students who took their lives into their hands by walking on snow covered streets; sometimes they walked down the middle!

Wouldn't it make more sense to have one fund for snow removal and all the townships worked together to plow the streets?