City of Lubbock Urges You to Read New Pointless, Poorly Explained Snow Removal Policy and Map

I thought I was going to have to put on a second pair of glasses and call a professor at Texas Tech to figure this one out.

The original story from Everything Lubbock is called "City Officials Urge Residents To Read New Snow Policy Before Severe Weather Hits." I thought, 'hmmm, maybe I'll be a good citizen and read the new snow policy before severe weather hits,' so I clicked through and it just took me to the City of Lubbock's homepage (bad, Everything Lubbock, bad!). So I searched snow removal and finally got to the goods.

First up, the "policy." The policy is pretty much a "mission statement" and not very informative. It states what type of streets are important for clearing, then refers you to the dumpster fire of a map (seen above) that we'll discuss next. But wait - we haven't gotten to the good stuff.

There's one thing in there that most of us find frustrating and getting scissors out of a vacuum packed package that you need scissors to open. Try this line on for size:

The Public Works Department of the City of Lubbock will not typically initiate snow removal operations until accumulations on the open ground approach four (4) inches.

Anyone else see a problem with waiting until there's four inches of snow on the ground? Well, yeah, because four inches is followed by five inches, then six inches and so on. Why wouldn't you get stuff out there when it's still a couple of inches and get ahead of the problem? Is this a budget thing? If so, you might want to ask the people about this. You know, the people who have somewhere around 100-400 wrecks every time the first snowflake hits. I think they might want you to be a little more on top of things.

So let's talk about the map provided. It's an overly complicated black and white map of Lubbock with around 13 blue lines on it. The blue lines are supposed to be the first roads cleared or something. Problem number one: Blue just doesn't contrast with black all that well, so it's pretty hard to make out. Secondly, apparently the point of these routes is to get you to hospitals. I say "apparently," because nowhere on the map does it explain what an "H" means. Next up, are the roads maintained by TexDot. Wanna take a guess as to what color they are? Black. Yes, black routes on a black and white map. Evidently, you need some kind of superpower to read those.

Want a little more? Well, not even the major streets are identified by name or number. There's some stuff off to the side about County Roads, but that information hasn't really been used since we used buckboards to trade okra preserves for a piglet at the county fair.

Let's talk a little reality here. The residents who look and micromanage this kind of stuff are mostly the elderly. I just don't see teens getting hopped up on Monster on a Saturday night saying, 'Ohhh, let's go online and look at the city snow removal map!'

I think the city could do a better job of putting together an easy-to-read map so the residents that care will know what's going on. Oh, and let's combine that with bold and daring statements like 'we're gong to clear 19th from University to Indiana first."

This whole release of "Emergency Snow Removal Policy" is a fail, fail, fail.

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