An informative guest post from District 7, Councilman Dowd’s office:
You may have noticed Emergency Snow Route signs appearing around the City and should have received the Winter Weather Emergency Resource Guide in the mail from the Department of Public Works. In addition, District 7 staff has created a Google Map to make it easier for residents to find the emergency snow routes in our district, which you will find linked below.
As stated in the Resource Guide, please keep in mind that the emergency routes will not come into play unless more than 6 inches of snow are forecasted. Before that point, emphasis will be placed on primary routes and small equipment will be assigned to secondary routes, with tertiary to follow. So, in a typical Pittsburgh snowstorm, the new Emergency Snow Routes would not be employed.
Based on a memo from the previous Director of Public Works (but this probably has not changed), the routes are defined as:
- Primary routes are main arteries that provide access to hospitals, schools, major access roads and fire stations.
- Secondary routes are usually residential streets and thoroughfares.
- Tertiary routes are those streets and alleyways that have little traffic on a regular basis.
A map of the new Emergency Snow Routes can be found here.
The Director of Public Works will be addressing Council regarding this plan in the near future and Councilman Dowd will be requesting an individual meeting to address District 7 in particular. If you have any questions that we can help to answer or bring to the Director’s attention, please contact the office at 412-255-2140 or email district7@city.pittsburgh.pa.us.
