Snowpocalypse 2010: Metro Strikes Back

As we near the one-year anniversary of last year's Snowpocalypse, we're beginning to fear a repeat of last year's snowstorm. It's been raining hard for days--if this was snow, we'd be under two feet of it by now, making car travel dangerous or even impossible, causing flights out of SeaTac to be canceled, and making bus travel in Seattle a daunting prospect. Most Metro routes were scaled back or outright canceled last December, meaning lots of walks on slippery sidewalks for Seattle pedestrians.

Fortunately, Metro's just come out with an emergency routing plan to deal with another potentially disastrous snowstorm. The plan includes an "adverse weather map," and improved transit alerts via email. A text message option would be a lot more useful for riders, though, at least until they start installing laptops at every bus stop. Correction! The good folks at King County were nice enough to let us know they already offer a text message service. Signup at the King County Metro website, and you'll get a wireless option on the second screen--you'll even be prompted with sample addresses if you don't know the address for your particular device.

Their regular bus routes will be replaced by 70 priority routes across King County--routes designed to be reliable in bad weather. Seattle DOT took a lot of flack for its response to the storm last year, with criticisms leveled against their use of rubber plow blades (as opposed to snow-shearing, but street-damaging, metal), and against their decision not to use salt to melt the snow. Given the hit SDOT's reputation took, we hope they'll be a lot more aggressive in their snow response this year. It looks like Metro's doing more than just hoping--they're banking on it. Metro's plan has a big caveat--it only works "as long as transportation service providers are able to keep roads passable."