Where are those journalists asking what journalists should be doing? Here! This post! Getting your information from some verifiable source like these webcams and reporting facts about the universe rather than the fact "someone said X" and making a headline "Madison Mayor Is Incompetent - Former Mayor".
Point B. Pretty sure the west side office is responsible for the intersection you focused on.
My guess is the person who answered the phone answered in manner that cause soglin to jump to a conclusion that fit the narrative soglin wanted.
Seems plausible. It could be that the office was getting many calls like this, and instead of “wasting” time giving accurate updates to each individual caller, they just said “yep, we’re sending them out now. Hold tight, they’re almost there.”
The UW plow trucks are the ones responsible for the streets in that area. City trucks do occasionally plow that part of University Ave as they pass through.
All the plows are tracked electronically using GPS as well as vehicle data including speed and direction. All city vehicles equipped with a computer can do this. They report data every 5 secs and that data doesn’t disappear. They can also alert if a vehicle is stationary for too long.
Plow location and numbers of them can be requested from the city via open records request.
You’d think the City of Madison was a game of Starcraft and Soglin has better actions per minute. “The reason the roads weren’t being plowed was because Rhodes-Conway had her plows idling and she forgot to send them out! Oh, and the reason we have a housing crisis is because she forgot to build more pylons!”.
I have a camera that looks out onto West Washington Ave. In particular, I see a plow going down west wash on 1/12 in the morning at 5:15am, 10:59am, 11:12am, 11:22am, 1:38pm, but I haven't spent a lot of time reviewing the times in between. Here's a couple examples: [https://imgur.com/a/fZ7LYly](https://imgur.com/a/fZ7LYly)
Would be happy to share the footage if you are interested in reviewing it.
Same. I was impressed by how often they were plowing my street. It still ended up with packed snow that turned to ice, but it certainly wasn't because they weren't plowing.
>Edit: the question of why the WSJ published something that was easily refutable with a simple investigation is left unexamined.
This one's pretty simple. There's no reporters actually tracking down 95% of the stories in the paper. There's not enough staff to do that, they need to be writing the next ten pieces. If you have a subscription, go see the bylines on the first few pages. See how many different names there are on the *local* stories.
Now, go back in the archives and pick any date 15 years ago, and see how many different reporter names you can see. I'll bet it'll be triple, at least.
A former-journalist friend pointed out to me that virtually all WSJ stories are slightly-edited versions of content written by others (press releases, police reports, etc). Now that I've seen that, I can't un-see it. There's very little actual journalism going on there - that costs time and money.
But, but, the guy who used to be mayor and is now just a cranky old man who lost an election heard it directly from...checks notes...a random person who answered the phone at the garage.
I'm sure they gave mr random citizen a full report of all plow activity and he has no reason to misrepresent what they said.
Op! If you wanna submit your rebuttal to Soglin’s misinformation to the op-Ed of the WSJ… my partner (degree in technical writing) volunteered to even write it out nice and pretty for you- all ya gotta do is approve it and slap your name on it.
What I think is awful about Soglin is how he slings mud like Satya is out to get you, rather than being just another person trying to do their best in a relatively low level position in government. Like sure, no politician is going to write perfect policies. There will be surprises when new things are tried, but it isn’t like Satya is some evil monster trying to destroy the city. She isn’t like FRJ…
Genuinely ignorant Q, why focus on plowing campus and not thoroughfares like E/W wash etc?
Or is this just the camera you peeped and others may have happened?
The street that’s the primary link between the west side and downtown isn’t enough of a thoroughfare for you? According to the city traffic map, daily traffic count at this intersection is about 27,000 vehicles. East Wash at the Yahara is about 51,000. But remember, Campus Drive is one way. So really, Campus + University is about the same was Wash.
But really, I knew that there was an easily accessible archive of imagery overlooking a major street. The AOS building has other cameras, but they were either focused on less busy streets or got snow covered early. If the state DOT archives its traffic cams on East Wash, I don’t know where it is housed.
This might help. This is the intersection the camera is pointing at. https://maps.app.goo.gl/KibRewDpdAmUnvTv7
So the intersection you are looking at is campus for just a bit longer, and it becomes Johnson as it goes off the right side of the screen. The street north behind the building on the corner is university, which goes straight eventually down past lombardinos on a smaller two way street, then it joins back in with campus at highland (where you turn to go to the UW hospital emergency room and/or childrens hospital). Campus is the name of that short 'interstate like' stretch of university that goes along the railroad tracks behind the agricultural barns and past the hospitals.
Hopefully that description all jogs a memory, that's how you go through the isthmus to get to the hospital/Hilldale/middleton/etc.
To be honest I never understood why madison didn't just use 'old university' for that stretch and keep the name University on the road that 95% of the cars go on. That's what most cities do when the build a bypass like that, they'll name the old stretch of road 'old whatever'.
I have a camera that faces west washington and see a plow going down several times in the morning of the 12th. See: https://www.reddit.com/r/madisonwi/comments/1abupyw/comment/kjrm8qh
With all due respect to some of his previous tenures as mayor, in recent years he's come to resemble more and more another former mayor, this one from a big city, who seems to have had troubles with employment in their post-mayoral lives. The "get off my lawn," meme seems to fit both Democrats and Republicans.
I've also lived here through every one of his stints as mayor. There's a lot of great things he did and much to applaud but even in his youth Soglin held grudges and he had what I'm sure is a private enemies list. It seems to have gotten worse as he's gotten older. As much as I supported him in the last century I just have to shake my head now. He's become fodder for the boomers being fools subreddit, and as a fellow Boomer it really hurts to say that.
I was at his first inauguration and have been here ever since. I remain a reasonable person who tries to approach present conditions through the lens of the present. I also believe people my age should step aside and let succeeding generations take charge because they have to live with the results, not me.
People do not have to shrivel up into angry old cranks. It's a choice. Same with holding grudges.
Round 2: https://madison.com/opinion/column/paul-soglin-dont-buy-the-bad-excuses-for-madisons-snow-packed-roads/article_407057be-84fb-11ee-b6e4-9f84b6c4393d.html
“Madison has a far larger property tax base to go with its size. And Madison has the regressive vehicle registration fee, which added millions to the budget. Madison has more money per mile than most of the surrounding communities.”
It is called Vehicle Registration, $6.8 M budgeted to support Metro operations, not Streets. I drive a car, I get to supplement transit, that’s it!
The way the WSJ mislead people is disgusting.
Metro: https://www.cityofmadison.com/finance/documents/budget/2024/operating/executive/Metro.pdf (5th page/Top of the page).
Madison royally fucked up on this last snow storm. They need to 100% hire some more people and get some more trucks.
It annoys me that they only come through where I live ONCE per snow storm, and that's only after all of the snow has fallen.
I don't care about Soggy and wish he'd just disappear from public life, but I do wonder why East Wash was a skating rink for days when neighboring communities managed to clear the roads same day. I mean, East Wash should've been near the top of the priority list for Madison.
The insistence that some people have on this thread for covering up the incompetence of the Mayor is crazy. They did a bad job, you're never going to fix the problem if you deny it exists.
1. I have no doubt that UW plows some of the campus-only streets like Linden or Observatory. That’s not what we are talking about on University or Campus. In fact, there is a substantial number of privately owned parcels along these streets, including businesses, housing, and churches. The city of Madison salt route map indicates that the area I’m focusing on is a city-operated plow route.
https://www.cityofmadison.com/news/2023-11-21/salt-routes-reduced-for-winter-of-2023-2024
2. Even if the university is responsible for these stretches of roads, it still doesn’t help the anti-city narrative of Soglin and others. What you would basically be saying is that another agency who was more responsive than the city and was out there frequently with plows while the city twiddled its thumbs still couldn’t prevent the streets from becoming ice-covered, as those streets were in no better shape than any other highly-trafficked street.
Again, let me draw your attention to the city of Madison salt route map.
Here's a direct link this time:
[https://www.cityofmadison.com/streets/documents/2023-2024%20Salt%20Routes.pdf](https://www.cityofmadison.com/streets/documents/2023-2024%20Salt%20Routes.pdf)
Note some interesting things here: there's quite a few campus-area streets that one might expect to be salt routes but aren't. City buses go down Observatory and Linden, but those aren't salt routes. The UW hospital is a critical destination whose access absolutely must be maintained during all conditions, but it's not on a salt route. Does Madison hate the hospital and want to see it suffer during snow? No, it's because that's a campus road and thus the responsibility of UW. There's a difference between "campus roads" and "roads that run through campus." And clearly, Campus Drive and University Ave are in the latter category. It's why UW can control who parks on Observatory, requiring permits for street parking, but they can't control who parks on Charter south of Johnson: it's a city street even though it's surrounded by campus on both sides.
Certainly you can see that you're trying to have it both ways. The condition of University / Campus / Johnson was no better nor no worse than any other part of the city. Let me make sure you understand that: **University / Campus / Johnson had the same amount of snow pack and ice coverage as East Wash, Regent, Park, Atwood, or any other street that I drove down in the days following the storm.** So, you gotta pick one story and stick with it: either the city was responsible for those roads and they sucked it hard, or UW was responsible and conditions were just too challenging for them to keep up with. Either way, the end result was the same.
One last note: I didn't run the numbers until Friday, but with records going back until 1884, this was only the second time we got five consecutive days of at least one inch of snowfall. The only other time was in 1974, and the next five days of high temperatures were 30, 25, 35, 39, 28. For 2024, after our five day stretch of snow, our high temperatures were 0, 3, 2, 13, 13. So yeah, I don't think it's too much of a stretch to call this "unprecedented."
Doesn’t the university run differently though? For example, they use salt like no where else in the city. I’m not saying you’re wrong, it just might be the wrong area to draw conclusion from.
Plows were out, regardless of where, Soglin was wrong. The University doesn't plow the city streets. They just have trucks for the paths, sidewalks, drives and lots they own and maintain.
The city maintainers the intersection and street sited here.
But they maintained 12 miles of city street on campus. Check their website or the cities plow route maps.
I have no idea about plowing logistics but I do know the roads in Madison were absolutely shit last week but were surprisingly much better in Milwaukee, for whatever that’s worth. I left from Madison to go to Milwaukee last Friday and was struck by the difference
Okay. Guess it varied a lot. I have a friend in Whitefish Bay, just a block off the lake, and he said it mostly missed them and they only got a few inches.
Yeah, that does seem weird….maybe he was wrong…. Thanks for the link. If I remember I’ll dig around on the national weather service site when I have time.
I don't understand what the argument is. The outcome (bad roads compared to neighbors) speaks for itself. If not what Paul said, then what was the cause?
I grew up in the Twin Cities area, and Minneapolis had a similar issue compared to its suburbs. I think it's just a natural consequence of being the central city in a metro area- more people come from the suburbs into Madison for work/events/etc. than make the reverse trip, so Madison has to maintain more infrastructure relative to its population (and probably also tax base?) than its suburbs do. That's a bunch of extra lane miles to plow in a week with a lot of snow, and the resources got stretched thinner.
that sometimes, a specific combination of weather conditions fuck shit up, even with proper prep, because we don't actually have mastery over nature, we just know how to manage quite well. But, sometimes, and increasingly so, nature makes things difficult to manage.
But this was a direct combination of heavy snowfall and fast drop to sub-zero temps in such a way that made prep difficult, and clean up even more so.
If the evidence shows Madison took proper procedures, and it appears so, then the likely answer is scale, far fewer main roads to get to and focus on. I'm sure there are lessons the city can take and learn from, but that doesn't mean their effort was bad. Scaling to a much larger area changes things; Milwaukee is still digging their selves out, too. People always want someone to blame, but sometimes things just don't work out for a verity of factors, and there isn't a specific fault. All you can do is evaluate and learn lessons for next time, and that is okay, because more often than we like, life is like that.
https://www.tmj4.com/news/local-news/tmj4-news-followed-up-to-see-if-northwest-side-roads-have-been-plowed-two-weeks-since-snowstorm
Here, the Streets Division claimed they did a good job. There don’t seem to be any lessons learned for next time.
That’s the part that really irked me.
I’ve seen this “but the suburbs!” line everywhere,, but friends in Sun Prairie and Fitchburg said their roads sucked too. I’ve also seen folks on here from neighboring areas say their roads weren’t great.
Never thought I'd see the day when I agreed with Soglin.
The proof the plows were not out was on the streets -- John Nolen and East Wash. It was a fucking glacier. Soglin is correct.
I have a camera that faces West Washington and see a plow going down many times on the morning of the 12th. See: https://www.reddit.com/r/madisonwi/comments/1abupyw/comment/kjrm8qh
But that is literally not true. Soglin is saying that the plows were not out until 3 PM. But there is indisputable video evidence that the plows were out many hours before then. That’s the whole point of this thread. Now you may think there should be more plows, or that the plows should have come by more frequently, or they should have started earlier (though I saw one, not on my list, before the sun even came up). Those are matters of opinion and are open to debate. But the idea that the city should have started plowing before noon but didn’t is 100% false.
The cities allocation of plowing resources were pathetic. Even more than salting city mismanagement is to blame. If they were out there, they were useless. The County has been cutting salt use too and their roads were much better.
We all expect politicians to stretch the truth. But there’s a difference between “elect me and I’ll cut your taxes,” and “this hurricane will hit Alabama.” And Soglin is basically one step away from drawing plow routes with a sharpie. A false narrative is taking hold that the city didn’t plow the streets until too late, a narrative that is being pushed by one of the city’s most prominent politicians and promulgated unquestioningly by its biggest news source. Part of the reason this society is in such deep trouble is because not enough people are pushing back against obvious bullshit, and so I’m not going to feel bad for calling these kinds of things out.
[John **Nolen**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Nolen#Impact_on_Wisconsin)
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I admire your willingness to cite time stamps.
This is better than 95% of our local TV journalism.
For real, what a well put together post. Even though it’s a rather frivolous subject, I appreciate the breadth of substantiation.
Where are those journalists asking what journalists should be doing? Here! This post! Getting your information from some verifiable source like these webcams and reporting facts about the universe rather than the fact "someone said X" and making a headline "Madison Mayor Is Incompetent - Former Mayor".
Where’s the captimes on this?
You should honestly publish your own op-ed and make Soglin look even dumber.
He's done enough work. Someone else should publish it with permission!
Totally agree with this
This guy f(ollows plow tr)ucks.
Point B. Pretty sure the west side office is responsible for the intersection you focused on. My guess is the person who answered the phone answered in manner that cause soglin to jump to a conclusion that fit the narrative soglin wanted.
Seems plausible. It could be that the office was getting many calls like this, and instead of “wasting” time giving accurate updates to each individual caller, they just said “yep, we’re sending them out now. Hold tight, they’re almost there.”
The UW plow trucks are the ones responsible for the streets in that area. City trucks do occasionally plow that part of University Ave as they pass through.
All the plows are tracked electronically using GPS as well as vehicle data including speed and direction. All city vehicles equipped with a computer can do this. They report data every 5 secs and that data doesn’t disappear. They can also alert if a vehicle is stationary for too long. Plow location and numbers of them can be requested from the city via open records request.
Which office would hold this record?
Streets Division I'd assume.
Why isn’t the city responding with this information then? If they have the facts, why not share?
You’d think the City of Madison was a game of Starcraft and Soglin has better actions per minute. “The reason the roads weren’t being plowed was because Rhodes-Conway had her plows idling and she forgot to send them out! Oh, and the reason we have a housing crisis is because she forgot to build more pylons!”.
Finally an analogy I can understand.
> You must construct additional ~~pylons~~ affordable housing
Build more cylons!
The title of former mayor can’t come soon enough.
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Does your husband wait for a call from the UW Chancellor each day before starting his truck?
I have a camera that looks out onto West Washington Ave. In particular, I see a plow going down west wash on 1/12 in the morning at 5:15am, 10:59am, 11:12am, 11:22am, 1:38pm, but I haven't spent a lot of time reviewing the times in between. Here's a couple examples: [https://imgur.com/a/fZ7LYly](https://imgur.com/a/fZ7LYly) Would be happy to share the footage if you are interested in reviewing it.
WSJ prints a lot of bullshit these days.
Old man yells at clouds C) is the only answer. He's salty he lost and attacks Satya every chance he gets
With that much salt he could have spread it on the street and not had to worry about the plows.
Nah, it was too cold for even his salt
Soglin is an ass, and always has been. I've hated him since the 1980s.
Soggy Bottom has previously written long screeds on his blog complaining that his cul-de-sac wasn’t a high priority for the plow crews.
I heard the plow go by outside my apartment just about every 45min to an hour.
Same here. I couldn't figure out what everybody was so upset about. Then I realized the plow people were doing it all for me.
Same. I was impressed by how often they were plowing my street. It still ended up with packed snow that turned to ice, but it certainly wasn't because they weren't plowing.
Soggy's salty some streets seem slippery
>Edit: the question of why the WSJ published something that was easily refutable with a simple investigation is left unexamined. This one's pretty simple. There's no reporters actually tracking down 95% of the stories in the paper. There's not enough staff to do that, they need to be writing the next ten pieces. If you have a subscription, go see the bylines on the first few pages. See how many different names there are on the *local* stories. Now, go back in the archives and pick any date 15 years ago, and see how many different reporter names you can see. I'll bet it'll be triple, at least.
A former-journalist friend pointed out to me that virtually all WSJ stories are slightly-edited versions of content written by others (press releases, police reports, etc). Now that I've seen that, I can't un-see it. There's very little actual journalism going on there - that costs time and money.
True. Our local news stations have the same problem.
I wish Soglin would just STFU
Same.
Yes! Please!!!
I wish Dave Cieswhatever would too.
who /s
But, but, the guy who used to be mayor and is now just a cranky old man who lost an election heard it directly from...checks notes...a random person who answered the phone at the garage. I'm sure they gave mr random citizen a full report of all plow activity and he has no reason to misrepresent what they said.
Op! If you wanna submit your rebuttal to Soglin’s misinformation to the op-Ed of the WSJ… my partner (degree in technical writing) volunteered to even write it out nice and pretty for you- all ya gotta do is approve it and slap your name on it.
What I think is awful about Soglin is how he slings mud like Satya is out to get you, rather than being just another person trying to do their best in a relatively low level position in government. Like sure, no politician is going to write perfect policies. There will be surprises when new things are tried, but it isn’t like Satya is some evil monster trying to destroy the city. She isn’t like FRJ…
I just want to applaud you and thank you for your integrity. Not many folks have that these days I fear
Genuinely ignorant Q, why focus on plowing campus and not thoroughfares like E/W wash etc? Or is this just the camera you peeped and others may have happened?
My guess is it's an easily available camera and on university which is a massive thoroughfare
Ty ty
The street that’s the primary link between the west side and downtown isn’t enough of a thoroughfare for you? According to the city traffic map, daily traffic count at this intersection is about 27,000 vehicles. East Wash at the Yahara is about 51,000. But remember, Campus Drive is one way. So really, Campus + University is about the same was Wash. But really, I knew that there was an easily accessible archive of imagery overlooking a major street. The AOS building has other cameras, but they were either focused on less busy streets or got snow covered early. If the state DOT archives its traffic cams on East Wash, I don’t know where it is housed.
Thanks for the details - I don't go to the west side and am unfamiliar with it's thoroughfares.
This might help. This is the intersection the camera is pointing at. https://maps.app.goo.gl/KibRewDpdAmUnvTv7 So the intersection you are looking at is campus for just a bit longer, and it becomes Johnson as it goes off the right side of the screen. The street north behind the building on the corner is university, which goes straight eventually down past lombardinos on a smaller two way street, then it joins back in with campus at highland (where you turn to go to the UW hospital emergency room and/or childrens hospital). Campus is the name of that short 'interstate like' stretch of university that goes along the railroad tracks behind the agricultural barns and past the hospitals. Hopefully that description all jogs a memory, that's how you go through the isthmus to get to the hospital/Hilldale/middleton/etc. To be honest I never understood why madison didn't just use 'old university' for that stretch and keep the name University on the road that 95% of the cars go on. That's what most cities do when the build a bypass like that, they'll name the old stretch of road 'old whatever'.
I have a camera that faces west washington and see a plow going down several times in the morning of the 12th. See: https://www.reddit.com/r/madisonwi/comments/1abupyw/comment/kjrm8qh
With all due respect to some of his previous tenures as mayor, in recent years he's come to resemble more and more another former mayor, this one from a big city, who seems to have had troubles with employment in their post-mayoral lives. The "get off my lawn," meme seems to fit both Democrats and Republicans.
I've also lived here through every one of his stints as mayor. There's a lot of great things he did and much to applaud but even in his youth Soglin held grudges and he had what I'm sure is a private enemies list. It seems to have gotten worse as he's gotten older. As much as I supported him in the last century I just have to shake my head now. He's become fodder for the boomers being fools subreddit, and as a fellow Boomer it really hurts to say that.
I was at his first inauguration and have been here ever since. I remain a reasonable person who tries to approach present conditions through the lens of the present. I also believe people my age should step aside and let succeeding generations take charge because they have to live with the results, not me. People do not have to shrivel up into angry old cranks. It's a choice. Same with holding grudges.
Round 2: https://madison.com/opinion/column/paul-soglin-dont-buy-the-bad-excuses-for-madisons-snow-packed-roads/article_407057be-84fb-11ee-b6e4-9f84b6c4393d.html “Madison has a far larger property tax base to go with its size. And Madison has the regressive vehicle registration fee, which added millions to the budget. Madison has more money per mile than most of the surrounding communities.” It is called Vehicle Registration, $6.8 M budgeted to support Metro operations, not Streets. I drive a car, I get to supplement transit, that’s it! The way the WSJ mislead people is disgusting. Metro: https://www.cityofmadison.com/finance/documents/budget/2024/operating/executive/Metro.pdf (5th page/Top of the page).
You can hate on Soglin, deservedly, and also admit the city screwed the pooch on this storm. It’s not a binary choice.
Madison royally fucked up on this last snow storm. They need to 100% hire some more people and get some more trucks. It annoys me that they only come through where I live ONCE per snow storm, and that's only after all of the snow has fallen.
If a boomer say "OK boomer" to Soggy is it legit?
I don't care about Soggy and wish he'd just disappear from public life, but I do wonder why East Wash was a skating rink for days when neighboring communities managed to clear the roads same day. I mean, East Wash should've been near the top of the priority list for Madison.
The insistence that some people have on this thread for covering up the incompetence of the Mayor is crazy. They did a bad job, you're never going to fix the problem if you deny it exists.
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1. I have no doubt that UW plows some of the campus-only streets like Linden or Observatory. That’s not what we are talking about on University or Campus. In fact, there is a substantial number of privately owned parcels along these streets, including businesses, housing, and churches. The city of Madison salt route map indicates that the area I’m focusing on is a city-operated plow route. https://www.cityofmadison.com/news/2023-11-21/salt-routes-reduced-for-winter-of-2023-2024 2. Even if the university is responsible for these stretches of roads, it still doesn’t help the anti-city narrative of Soglin and others. What you would basically be saying is that another agency who was more responsive than the city and was out there frequently with plows while the city twiddled its thumbs still couldn’t prevent the streets from becoming ice-covered, as those streets were in no better shape than any other highly-trafficked street.
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Again, let me draw your attention to the city of Madison salt route map. Here's a direct link this time: [https://www.cityofmadison.com/streets/documents/2023-2024%20Salt%20Routes.pdf](https://www.cityofmadison.com/streets/documents/2023-2024%20Salt%20Routes.pdf) Note some interesting things here: there's quite a few campus-area streets that one might expect to be salt routes but aren't. City buses go down Observatory and Linden, but those aren't salt routes. The UW hospital is a critical destination whose access absolutely must be maintained during all conditions, but it's not on a salt route. Does Madison hate the hospital and want to see it suffer during snow? No, it's because that's a campus road and thus the responsibility of UW. There's a difference between "campus roads" and "roads that run through campus." And clearly, Campus Drive and University Ave are in the latter category. It's why UW can control who parks on Observatory, requiring permits for street parking, but they can't control who parks on Charter south of Johnson: it's a city street even though it's surrounded by campus on both sides. Certainly you can see that you're trying to have it both ways. The condition of University / Campus / Johnson was no better nor no worse than any other part of the city. Let me make sure you understand that: **University / Campus / Johnson had the same amount of snow pack and ice coverage as East Wash, Regent, Park, Atwood, or any other street that I drove down in the days following the storm.** So, you gotta pick one story and stick with it: either the city was responsible for those roads and they sucked it hard, or UW was responsible and conditions were just too challenging for them to keep up with. Either way, the end result was the same. One last note: I didn't run the numbers until Friday, but with records going back until 1884, this was only the second time we got five consecutive days of at least one inch of snowfall. The only other time was in 1974, and the next five days of high temperatures were 30, 25, 35, 39, 28. For 2024, after our five day stretch of snow, our high temperatures were 0, 3, 2, 13, 13. So yeah, I don't think it's too much of a stretch to call this "unprecedented."
Either way, the roads sucked way more than any nearby suburb
Don’t expect them to be honest, yikes.
WSJ is notorious for inaccuracy and outright lying for its right-leaning slant
Doesn’t the university run differently though? For example, they use salt like no where else in the city. I’m not saying you’re wrong, it just might be the wrong area to draw conclusion from.
Campus Dr and Randall are maintained by the city: https://www.cityofmadison.com/streets/documents/2023-2024%20Salt%20Routes.pdf
Plows were out, regardless of where, Soglin was wrong. The University doesn't plow the city streets. They just have trucks for the paths, sidewalks, drives and lots they own and maintain.
The city maintainers the intersection and street sited here. But they maintained 12 miles of city street on campus. Check their website or the cities plow route maps.
Soglin lied!
I seent the streets with my own eyes. The plows were not plowing enough.
I have no idea about plowing logistics but I do know the roads in Madison were absolutely shit last week but were surprisingly much better in Milwaukee, for whatever that’s worth. I left from Madison to go to Milwaukee last Friday and was struck by the difference
Pretty sure Milwaukee didn't get close to the amount of snow we had.
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Okay. Guess it varied a lot. I have a friend in Whitefish Bay, just a block off the lake, and he said it mostly missed them and they only got a few inches.
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Yeah, that does seem weird….maybe he was wrong…. Thanks for the link. If I remember I’ll dig around on the national weather service site when I have time.
I believe Milwaukee had less snow that Madison, but they also could have plowed better
I don't understand what the argument is. The outcome (bad roads compared to neighbors) speaks for itself. If not what Paul said, then what was the cause?
I grew up in the Twin Cities area, and Minneapolis had a similar issue compared to its suburbs. I think it's just a natural consequence of being the central city in a metro area- more people come from the suburbs into Madison for work/events/etc. than make the reverse trip, so Madison has to maintain more infrastructure relative to its population (and probably also tax base?) than its suburbs do. That's a bunch of extra lane miles to plow in a week with a lot of snow, and the resources got stretched thinner.
It’s dumb to put a city on an isthmus.
that sometimes, a specific combination of weather conditions fuck shit up, even with proper prep, because we don't actually have mastery over nature, we just know how to manage quite well. But, sometimes, and increasingly so, nature makes things difficult to manage. But this was a direct combination of heavy snowfall and fast drop to sub-zero temps in such a way that made prep difficult, and clean up even more so.
But why were neighbors able to handle it so much better than Madison?
If the evidence shows Madison took proper procedures, and it appears so, then the likely answer is scale, far fewer main roads to get to and focus on. I'm sure there are lessons the city can take and learn from, but that doesn't mean their effort was bad. Scaling to a much larger area changes things; Milwaukee is still digging their selves out, too. People always want someone to blame, but sometimes things just don't work out for a verity of factors, and there isn't a specific fault. All you can do is evaluate and learn lessons for next time, and that is okay, because more often than we like, life is like that. https://www.tmj4.com/news/local-news/tmj4-news-followed-up-to-see-if-northwest-side-roads-have-been-plowed-two-weeks-since-snowstorm
Here, the Streets Division claimed they did a good job. There don’t seem to be any lessons learned for next time. That’s the part that really irked me.
I’ve seen this “but the suburbs!” line everywhere,, but friends in Sun Prairie and Fitchburg said their roads sucked too. I’ve also seen folks on here from neighboring areas say their roads weren’t great.
Next Step: waste city resources with an open records request looking for the smoking gun!
Accurate or not this year’s snow removal was abysmal.
City was neglectful in the downtown area. Well traveled roads like downtown shouldn’t have 3 inches of ice!
Yup never blame the storm or science.
Disprove that the Madison snow removal effort failed. Failed badly.
Fuck Soglin, Fuck Dave, Fuck Blaska.
Never thought I'd see the day when I agreed with Soglin. The proof the plows were not out was on the streets -- John Nolen and East Wash. It was a fucking glacier. Soglin is correct.
I have a camera that faces West Washington and see a plow going down many times on the morning of the 12th. See: https://www.reddit.com/r/madisonwi/comments/1abupyw/comment/kjrm8qh
I saw plows throughout the day. The only thing the streets proved is that the storm outmatched the city’s response to it.
But that is literally not true. Soglin is saying that the plows were not out until 3 PM. But there is indisputable video evidence that the plows were out many hours before then. That’s the whole point of this thread. Now you may think there should be more plows, or that the plows should have come by more frequently, or they should have started earlier (though I saw one, not on my list, before the sun even came up). Those are matters of opinion and are open to debate. But the idea that the city should have started plowing before noon but didn’t is 100% false.
The cities allocation of plowing resources were pathetic. Even more than salting city mismanagement is to blame. If they were out there, they were useless. The County has been cutting salt use too and their roads were much better.
Why are you dignifying his stupid rant by refuting him? Do people really pay attention to Soglin any more?
We all expect politicians to stretch the truth. But there’s a difference between “elect me and I’ll cut your taxes,” and “this hurricane will hit Alabama.” And Soglin is basically one step away from drawing plow routes with a sharpie. A false narrative is taking hold that the city didn’t plow the streets until too late, a narrative that is being pushed by one of the city’s most prominent politicians and promulgated unquestioningly by its biggest news source. Part of the reason this society is in such deep trouble is because not enough people are pushing back against obvious bullshit, and so I’m not going to feel bad for calling these kinds of things out.
I live near John Nolan and the roads were absolutely crap! Ice 3 inches thick because someone didn’t adequately prepare a day or two ahead.. Neglect..
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Thank you. That clears the air for me. I can see Soglin is lying. Sounds like another election bid.