1/30/09

Reason No.319 that car ownership is vastly overrated: Snow!!

I’ve watched society struggle so mightily with their automobiles in the last 72 hours that it makes me wonder why anyone would bother with four hours of shoveling or heaving and pushing or slowly wrecking into one another. One person died after being struck by a snowplow! It’s nuts. If I owned a car – stop laughing! – I’d treat snow days with the same mentality as I would if my car were in the shop; out of commission. The public transit sucks in this city and everyone knows it, no point railing on it any further at this time, but it does exist, and it can maneuver you around the city while your car pretends it’s preserving itself through an ice age. Sure you got to go work, school, daycare, whatever, but snow happens, and the bosses, teachers and other authority figures need to take it into consideration as well.

For thousands, this isn’t a possible alternative thanks to the poor infrastructure and general lack of public transit. But for those in Clifton, it seems you could survive without your car for up to even a week! – Gasp!

The cars here are barricaded by three-foot walls of ice and dirty, gray snow that the plows pushed into parked cars along the streets. Those who’ve managed to dig their way out of the parking space have returned their cars parked at jaunty angles; afraid they’ll be trapped in again.