In addition to those sections of the city where snow must be removed, which we term the pick up sections, there are many miles of main arteries where snow must not be allowed to interfere with traffic. These traffic highways cannot be picked up at once as there is not available labor and equipment to handle such an immense amount of work. Eventually, no doubt, more pick-up work will be required, involving greater investment in equipment, since the labor market for this class of work is not an expansive factor that can be depended upon. Many traffic arteries carry car lines, in which case the street car company plows out from the tracks, from which point our truck plows, operating one, two or three abreast, as the width of the street may require, plow the snow over into the gutters. This renders the street available for its primary purpose, namely, moving traffic, and it inconveniences only those who expect free curb parking. The method may become seriously expensive in case of a thaw followed by a freeze before the snow can be picked up after the downtown section has been cleaned. Some few streets and boulevards that have a lawn between the curb and sidewalk, adapted themselves to this type of snow cleaning, as the snow may be plowed up over the curb onto the lawn. In addition to the street railway, Detroit is assisted in snow plowing by the bus companies, who operate their own plows on such streets as their equipment travels.

In general, then, all snow is plowed from the center of the street toward the curb. Just in advance of the pick-up machines a gutter plow is sent through so as to windrow the snow out about three to five feet from the curb. With a windrow of about four feet high, trucks were loaded last winter at the rate of ten cubic yards a minute. The use of the belt conveyor type of loader, preceded by plows windrowing the material, has proven the most successful and economical method Detroit has found for snow removal. It eliminates practically all unskilled hand labor, is continuous in operation and involves only simple machinery that most any of our operators can handle. Loading by crane involves hand piling and cleaning. The crane seems a more hazardous machine in traffic than the belt loader, but is better adapted to picking piles from in between parked The crane requires a highly skilled operator and as the city does not normally double-shift its cranes throughout the year, such operators are not readily available, for the short emergency period in winter.

Snow cleaning is a part of street cleaning and suffers more seriously by reason of parking than any other branch of street cleaning. Taxi drivers and the general public are enthusiastic about having streets free from snow and will gladly move their machines from the curb providing the driver can be located, but the driver of a private car, who parks until 3:00 in the morning on a main artery, in the heart of town, is a hard individual to find. The consequence

is either an immense amount of labor used to move machines or an unfinished job of snow cleaning in passing parked autos with the loaders. Last year the co-operation of the Police Department was of great assistance in posting signs along the streets to the effect that parking was prohibited and in furnishing officers to enforce the signs. Results, however, were not all that could be hoped for, since Detroit's motorists did not take parking signs seriously. With double the number of tow cars now in the Traffic Division of the Police Department it is hoped that parking will be less of an interference this year than it was last, but in any case, public co-operation on snow cleaning must be obtained, both in parking and in sidewalk cleaning.

Sidewalk cleaning by the public in front of their premises must generally destroy, to some extent, the work done by the department during the preceding night. To expect property owners to get up out of their beds as must the Street Cleaning Department is impractical and out of the question, but where the sidewalks are 20 feet in width and occasionally more, a 6-inch snow fall shoveled into the gutters makes them look as though the street had not been cleaned at least it entails going back over the work by hand.

In the winter of 1924-1925 Detroit spent $34,903.95 for snow handling a seasonal snow fall of 30 inches. The maximum 24-hour fall was 5 inches and the greatest depth on the ground 8 inches. Last year in the season of 1925-1926 the snow fall records in Detroit were broken since the institution of the local Weather Bureau in 1885. Detroit spent $121,175.35 and received an exceptional snow fall of 76 inches. The greatest fall in 24 hours was 9 inches and the greatest depth on the ground was 9 inches. Comparing these figures it will be noted that the price per inch of snow fall in Detroit has risen approximately one-third, and that the total cost of removal, per capita has doubled. Detroit increased its snow expenditures 246 per cent last year. That we spent more money may be accounted for by the fact that we had more than twice as much snow than the preceding year, but the fact that our cost per inch increased may be accounted for by the fact that more area was cleaned, if variations in snow conditions be neglected. Main arterial highways and crosstown streets as far out as four to six miles from the center of the city, were not only plowed, but were picked up to provide needed. traffic street area.

The why and wherefore of snow removal as mentioned in the opening paragraph of this paper, indicates a rising cost to the taxpayer for this work, because he wants and needs more and better service and greater conveniences in the use of his streets. As it is an axiom of successful service that the customer must be satisfied, providing he is willing to pay the bill, it is then the function of public officials and men in charge of this kind of work, to see that increasingly good.

service is given at a decreasing unit cost. It is to be hoped that all big cities will adopt a uniform cost keeping system on snow removal, as well as on other public service functions so that from the dissemination of such information, based on like factors, such a gathering as this one may be even more productive in raising service and lowering costs.

SNOW LOADING EXPERIENCES

By J. E. Marson, District Manager of Barber-Greene Co.,

Aurora, Ill.

Five years

Increased traffic is the main reason for snow removal. ago there were only five million automobiles in the whole country. Today there are twenty million. In addition practically no one puts his car up for the winter. All of these drivers are voters and if they don't get the streets cleared quickly they are sure to blame

some one.

In Upper Michigan one pays a license fee on a car for the whole year 'round, and I believe there were six months of the year that, up to last year, one could not use the car; but since then snow-removal devices have been put to work in the upper peninsula, which allows one to use his car the whole year 'round, and the cost of snow removal has been more than paid for by the use of the car.

However, about the most important reason for snow removal, and prompt snow removal at that, is to lessen the fire hazard. Last Winter in Boston for instance, for forty-eight hours snow completely blocked the business district so that fire apparatus couldn't have been gotten to any of the big buildings down town at all.

Knowing the average business to be expected during the month of February, 1920, the Merchants Association of New York City estimated that during the twelve days that the snow storm tied up everything, New York vehicular traffic was so tied up that the merchants suffered a loss in trade as great as $60,000,000. A single snow storm, in 1918 is estimated to have cost the downtown stores in Chicago about $20,000,000, according to the State Street Association. This figure was arrived at by taking the average trade during corresponding weeks for several years. The figures for the week in which the big snow storm came were $20,000,000, below the average. No increases in the weekly averages after the storm were noted and the total for the year was, therefore, that much less. The snow caused a loss which was never recovered.

This economic loss goes back again to the automobile. Often times even when a pathway for through traffic is cleared it is essential for the business man that parking space also be cleared. Many of the merchants' best customers come in their own automobiles and they are not going to do so if no parking space is available. The small merchant, such as the neighborhood grocer, does not suffer as much. Sometimes his trade increases because people cannot get downtown. But it costs him much more to replenish his small stock to supply the extra demand. If he makes deliveries. they cost him more also. A neighborhood grocer discussing the

storms of 1918 in the Middle West stated that at one time his trucks were stalled completely. He canvassed the town for horses and found that everyone else was doing the same thing. Finally he hired a team and wagon at a fancy price and made a few deliveries. This practically absorbed his extra profit gained from people who ordinarily would have gone downtown.

Merchants in outlying trade districts such as the Woodlawn group in Chicago or the 125th Street group in New York City suffer just as much in proportion as do the downtown stores, because these groups serve territories as large as ordinary cities.

No matter whether you are a buyer or seller, the snow cover on your city's streets costs you money. Unremoved snow keeps customers away from your doors, if you are a seller, increases your selling costs, and creates losses that would not be sustained if the snow were quickly removed. If you are a buyer, unremoved snow keeps you from going to the best trading places, makes it necessary for all merchants to increase their overhead charges, and costs you much in annoying delays in getting anywhere.

Some people defend no action toward proper snow removal by stating that the seasons are changing and that there is not as much snow now as there used to be. This statement is denied by officials of the Weather Bureau. Mr. Joseph B. Kincer of the U. S. Weather Bureau writing in the Monthly Weather Review states "There is a widespread popular belief in many parts of the country, especially in the earlier settled sections of the Northeast, that less snow falls now than was the case years ago. In New England, for example, it is customary to speak of the 'old fashioned New England Winters' which brought many heavy snowstorms; when snow lay on the ground uninterruptedly all winter, and when sleighing was possible for three or four months without a break.”

"Nevertheles, the winter of 1915-16 was in much of New England the equal to historic snowy ones. Impressions of snow storms gained in childhood, particularly in the country, will not be equalled by those gained in adult life, especially if it is spent in the city. Great storms of history appear close together, just as telegraph poles seem to stand close together when we look back at them, but are some distance apart as they go by."

In Philadelphia weather records have been kept for 250 years. For that whole period the average annual snowfall is 22.2 inches. For the period between 1912 and 1922 the average snow fall was 25.99 inches. These figures disprove the statement that we are getting less snow now than in "the good old days." Figures in other cities where records have been kept a sufficiently long time. substantiate this.

Weather reports also show that Chicago sometimes gets as much snow during the winter as Denver, and often times as much snow falls in Washington or Philadelphia in twenty-four hours as can possibly fall anywhere.