SNOW!!!!!!

[Presto]

Originally Posted by subordinate

agreed,

Crews knew about the snowfall, yet roads were shit out there. Wtf.

They rolled the dice, like I did. Too bad they lost, and I won.

[kkthind]

Originally Posted by Adorkami

A couple in their 80s... if that's your thing sure...

Nothing gets my blood pumping like ladies in their 80s

[coneZONE]

I LOVE THE SNOW. Until I have to go to work

Ugh. The worst thing so far are those entitled bitches who come in at noon on the first snow, without an appointment, start crying because you won't let them jump to the front of the walk-in queue, then complain to the GM that they want their winter tires done yesterday...
So... it looks like we need an adult preschool to teach people to wait for their turn?

[boibuddha]

There were a couple of cars with smashed windshields on HWY 91, I can only assume from falling ice. Careful of there, guys

[- kT]

Originally Posted by IMASA

Route to work is from Richmond to Oak and 25th area via Arthur Lang. Traveling around Richmond, the roads didn't look like they were salted/plowed, but there wasn't that much snow. Seen the usual BMW SUV's going 20-30km/h faster than everyone else and Corolla's driving 20-30km/h slower than everyone else.

The ramp from Marine Drive onto Oak street was completely blocked due to buses.
Went north up Cambie instead, traveling behind a Cadillac that was going really slow up the hill and eventually pulled to the side. Lots of pick up trucks stopped on the side, blocking 1 lane on either side. On the south side, various cars spun out or stopped blocking the lane going down Cambie.

Made it to work on time, only had to leave 15mins early.
Blizzak WS80's performed great, as usual.

i had to go through this too. what a nightmare.. not sure how you made it on time, my 25-30 minute commute turned to 1.5 hours. made it fine in my EG with all seasons, but only risked it cause my snowies were at work. the amount of people who just have no clue how to drive in snow + were on all seasons was just atrocious though. i almost got rear ended by the same idiot in an old mazda b2000 3 times. moved out of his lane and made some distance, and about an hour or so after getting in, saw it go by on the back of a tow truck, front bumper all caved in and grille gone. smfh

on a brighter note, i think i love this EG. only picked it up on saturday, but it's already proven it's worth and then some. the ride home on snowies felt no different than a dry day as far as grip and stability. first year i've actually been properly equipped with a proper winter ready beater, and it's a pretty sweet feel

my commute home also actually took less time than normal (25-30 minutes down to 20).. not sure how that happened. i guess everybody who was causing the traffic snarls for the morning commute had already wiped out and therefore weren't on the road to mess things up a second time

[thumper]

i left work from surrey at 3:30pm.

i just got home now at 7pm.

Big fat star to the city of new west who actually plowed the streets.

And a big raspberry for Burnaby. You should have seen Canada Way. Cars abandoned all over the place. There were two articulated transit buses stacked up against each other at the intersection of kensington and hastings.

I thought if I could follow the bus routes on the side streets I might have some luck getting home.... nope.

FML

[subordinate]

Originally Posted by thumper

i left work from surrey at 3:30pm.

i just got home now at 7pm.

Big fat star to the city of new west who actually plowed the streets.

And a big raspberry for Burnaby. You should have seen Canada Way. Cars abandoned all over the place. There were two articulated transit buses stacked up against each other at the intersection of kensington and hastings.

I thought if I could follow the bus routes on the side streets I might have some luck getting home.... nope.

FML

Jesus..I was off at 3 from Surrey, got home in East Van at 5. Granted, I figured the sensible thing was to take kingsway instead of Canada way (Steep hill, figured lots of sliding and accidents) or Brunette/Columbia (Backed semi truckers)

Mentally drained from the commute.... and sliding..two snow tires on rear...should have bought another two (Fwd car)...

[JSALES]

Retards on the road when I was driving to school earlier this afternoon, I get it's snowing but you don't need to be driving 30 km/h or maybe I just think I'm invincible driving in the snow

[Tapioca]

To play Devil's advocate, do you think it's a good idea for a city to allocate tens of millions of dollars in its annual budget for something that has happened fewer and fewer times? Keep in mind that it has not snowed in nearly 2 years in most areas of Metro Vancouver. These types of storms will probably be a thing of the past in 10-20 years due to climate change.

People bitch and complain about city crews being understaffed and being caught off-guard. Most cities have limited resources, so snow removal gets put to the bottom of the list of expenditures.

The region shuts down for a couple of days then all is back to normal. The amount of lost productivity during a snowstorm probably doesn't add up to how much it would cost each city to procure and maintain sufficient snow removal equipment. It's a cold calculation, but you can see why municipal governments make it.

With that said, I had no problems getting up the mountain today in my set of General Altimax Arctic tires.

[Hondaracer]

if the money was actually "Saved" and not squandered on other things i'd feel better about agreeing lol..

Highway from Vancouver Cassiar to Gaglardi was actually pretty good at 5:30, about the same amount of time as a normal day..

however, it already felt as though there was a thin layer of ice even in the fast lane.. I wasnt really slipping anywhere until i got on the highway and fairly quickly i noticed my back end slipping and a bit of sliding when braking

might be a scary night/morning

[thumper]

Originally Posted by Tapioca

To play Devil's advocate, do you think it's a good idea for a city to allocate tens of millions of dollars in its annual budget for something that has happened fewer and fewer times? Keep in mind that it has not snowed in nearly 2 years in most areas of Metro Vancouver. These types of storms will probably be a thing of the past in 10-20 years due to climate change.

People bitch and complain about city crews being understaffed and being caught off-guard. Most cities have limited resources, so snow removal gets put to the bottom of the list of expenditures.

The region shuts down for a couple of days then all is back to normal. The amount of lost productivity during a snowstorm probably doesn't add up to how much it would cost each city to procure and maintain sufficient snow removal equipment. It's a cold calculation, but you can see why municipal governments make it.

With that said, I had no problems getting up the mountain today in my set of General Altimax Arctic tires.

let's wait and see how it turns out after the big freeze tomorrow... and the next snowfall scheduled for thursday... and this sunday too. and the huge amount of icbc claims from just today alone.

[ZN6]

Which one's harder to navigate through? A zombie apocalypse? Or first snowfall in metro Vancouver?

I take zombie apocalypse over snowfall any day.

[Tapioca]

Originally Posted by thumper

let's wait and see how it turns out after the big freeze tomorrow... and the next snowfall scheduled for thursday... and this sunday too. and the huge amount of icbc claims from just today alone.

Municipal governments and ICBC are separate organizations with different mandates.

If I were the chair of the Union of BC Municipalities, I would lobby Victoria to make winter tires mandatory on all privately-owned vehicles between the months of December and February.

[Jmac]

10-15 cm expected for my area tonight. Looks like I'll be leaving early again tomorrow.

[Akinari]

Originally Posted by 7seven

the dumbest thing today I saw driving into the office downtown was freaking golf cart sized snow plows and city crew working to clear snow from the bike lanes on Dunsmuir, but i didn't see one single truck or worker working on the streets or sidewalks. Seriously who is going to even bike in a snow storm, Moonbeam needs a kick in the head.

Originally Posted by ZN6

Which one's harder to navigate through? A zombie apocalypse? Or first snowfall in metro Vancouver?

I take zombie apocalypse over snowfall any day.

Well I sure hope the zombie apocalypse never comes while it's snowing in Vancouver otherwise...

[thumper]

Originally Posted by Tapioca

Municipal governments and ICBC are separate organizations with different mandates.

If I were the chair of the Union of BC Municipalities, I would lobby Victoria to make winter tires mandatory on all privately-owned vehicles between the months of December and February.

quebec did that back in 2014...

Winter tires are mandatory in Quebec starting tomorrow - Montreal - CBC News

... one can only hope it could work here. but then i'm also assuming most drivers outside of the gvrd have the common sense to use winter tires because they have more consistent snowfall than here?

[Gumby]

Originally Posted by DragonChi

I'm suprised they didn't shutdown the school.

In the past 15+ years of attending/working at UBC, they've shut down ONCE. And only because the power station stopped working.

Originally Posted by subordinate

Furthermore, city crews knew about the snowfall, yet roads were shit out there. Wtf. Especially Burnaby.

In their defense, my coworker woke up repeatedly, eagerly waiting for the snow, but she said it didn't start coming down until 5am or so. By then the city crews were screwed. It came down too fast for them to plow & salt in time for the morning rush. If it snowed throughout the night, they would have time to work through the night.

[syee]

Originally Posted by Tapioca

To play Devil's advocate, do you think it's a good idea for a city to allocate tens of millions of dollars in its annual budget for something that has happened fewer and fewer times? Keep in mind that it has not snowed in nearly 2 years in most areas of Metro Vancouver. These types of storms will probably be a thing of the past in 10-20 years due to climate change.

People bitch and complain about city crews being understaffed and being caught off-guard. Most cities have limited resources, so snow removal gets put to the bottom of the list of expenditures.

The region shuts down for a couple of days then all is back to normal. The amount of lost productivity during a snowstorm probably doesn't add up to how much it would cost each city to procure and maintain sufficient snow removal equipment. It's a cold calculation, but you can see why municipal governments make it.

With that said, I had no problems getting up the mountain today in my set of General Altimax Arctic tires.

Completely agree with you. It's silly to allocate a bunch of money to buy and maintain equipment for what amounts to at most a week in a year of snow. There's tons of other projects that our tax dollars could go to.

It's funny how the people that are complaining that the city should allocate more money to plows are probably the ones that aren't prepared with winter tires. They're the "fuck winter tires - I'm not spending $700 for one week of snow". You don't want to spend $700 for one week of snow. The city doesn't want to spend $7 million on a fleet of snow plows.

My personal opinion - do what you can to cover yourself for these scenarios. Don't rely on someone else (i.e. the city) to help you out when there's a few inches of snow outside.

[danned]

[TOPEC]

got to try out some Nokian Hakkapeliitta R2 on the work vehicle, pretty surprised by its performance. i think its an all weather tire and not a true winte, so if u guys r too lazy to swap between winter/summer tire this is a pretty good choice in between. was driving all around burnaby/new west and didnt get stuck once.

[coneZONE]

Just remembered my trip to Beijing last year... it happened to start snowing when we were there for that week. And I was surprised since you would expect it to snow regularly there.
1) winter tires do not exist there. Asked my relatives why ppl didn't have winter tires and they were like "What are winter tires?"
2) snowploughs also do not exist. THEY WERE USING STREET CLEANING TRUCKS TO TRY TO BRUSH AWAY THE SNOW. I think I saw salt trucks. At each highway entrance toll booth, the attendant would physically shovel salt onto the road.
3) since they had no snowploughs, they had to shut down every main highway/freeway and everyone was directed to side streets

I think we have it considerably good here haha

[Jmac]

Originally Posted by Tapioca

To play Devil's advocate, do you think it's a good idea for a city to allocate tens of millions of dollars in its annual budget for something that has happened fewer and fewer times? Keep in mind that it has not snowed in nearly 2 years in most areas of Metro Vancouver. These types of storms will probably be a thing of the past in 10-20 years due to climate change.

People bitch and complain about city crews being understaffed and being caught off-guard. Most cities have limited resources, so snow removal gets put to the bottom of the list of expenditures.

The region shuts down for a couple of days then all is back to normal. The amount of lost productivity during a snowstorm probably doesn't add up to how much it would cost each city to procure and maintain sufficient snow removal equipment. It's a cold calculation, but you can see why municipal governments make it.

With that said, I had no problems getting up the mountain today in my set of General Altimax Arctic tires.

Last 2 winters were intense El Ninos, this year is a weak La Nina (which hasn't even started yet; expected to officially start in February). Huge difference between the two.

It's just sheer negligence to ignore readily-available climate science while hiding behind climate change as a reason to cut the budget.

[twitchyzero]

in my short 20 years living here I only recall maybe twice where snow/ice lasted more than a week out of the year within city limits.

makes no sense for an ample amount of plows to sit idle...unless it's considered emergency I can understand why we're always underprepared.

there's even city workers here chiming in they're working non-stop

move to somewhere that rarely sees rain. Same shit happens....city comes to a crawl. Vancouverites will just laugh at that like how the rest of Canada laughs at Vancouver/Victoria

[Ch28]

It's suppose to be 3 degrees and sunny tomorrow, so prepare yourselves for some slick roads and do the sensible thing and drive carefully.

[BrokenEuro]

Originally Posted by TOPEC

got to try out some Nokian Hakkapeliitta R2 on the work vehicle, pretty surprised by its performance. i think its an all weather tire and not a true winte, so if u guys r too lazy to swap between winter/summer tire this is a pretty good choice in between. was driving all around burnaby/new west and didnt get stuck once.

The WRG3 is the all weather tire carried by Nokian. The Hakkapeliitta R2 is a dedicated winter tire which is on par with the X-ice3 in terms of performance ratings.