nothin The Little Plow That Could | New Haven Independent

The Little Plow That Could

Paul Bass Photos

A crowd of onlookers gathered to watch the maiden voyage of the Snogo — one of New Haven’s new monster snow trucks — on Church Street Tuesday afternoon. Meanwhile, Dave Lawlor maneuvered an old-school eight-foot plow down Anderson Street more smoothly, and a day earlier, than he would have after storms in years past.

The fanfare downtown and the quiet moment in East Rock were connected.

They demonstrated the benefits of New Haven’s updated approach to tackling snowstorms.

The city moved Tuesday afternoon to the second phase of clearing streets in the wake of Winter Storm Juno — hitting neighborhood side streets like Anderson.

The storm dumped about a foot of snow rather than the predicted two to three feet. That was still enough to roll out 11 pieces of equipment the Harp administration purchased for heavy-duty storms after discovering last winter that its snow fleet was antiquated and insufficient. The pieces include the $90,000 Snogo,” a souped-up 10-foot-wide snowblower that can fill a 40-foot truck with snow in six minutes. (Read a full story about that and the other new trucks here.)

The new trucks, a hit with public-works drivers, enable crews to clear main roads faster and more completely in big storms.

A second benefit: The big new trucks free up smaller trucks to get to narrow neighborhood streets sooner. Trucks like the Super Duty 550 that Lawlor piloted on East Rock’s Anderson Street (in photo).

If we didn’t have the new trucks, we wouldn’t be hitting this stuff til tomorrow or the day after tomorrow,” Lawlor, who’s 41, said from the behind the wheel.

In past storms, the department needed the small trucks for avenues like Whalley and Whitney and Dixwell. That took longer. And smaller neighborhood streets could wait days for a plow if a storm was big enough. We’d have breakdowns” with the smaller trucks trying to handle major thoroughfares, recalled Lawlor. It was terrible. With the new trucks, it’s a godsend.”

A small truck had already made a first pass on Anderson Tuesday before Lawlor arrived at 2:30 p.m., less than 24 hours after the storm hit in force. He noticed a second difference from past years: No cars were parked on the odd side of the narrow one-way street, or on other streets that were more congested in previous storms (like not-quite-odd-numbered-free Canner Street, as seen above through his windshield). That’s because of a second change this year: As part of a plan prepared this summer to learn from the mistakes of past storm operations, the Harp administration set out to communicate a clear citywide parking ban before the snow hit, then enforced it. (Read about that here and here.) Parkers in some parts of town still didn’t get the memo (or else ignored it). But overall plow-drivers like Lawlor encountered freer pathways to plow.

Lawlor has driven public-works plows for the city for five years. He worked the round-the-clock shifts in 2013’s Blizzard Nemo, which dumped more snow on New Haven — 34 inches — than the city had seen since 1888. He’ll never forget that storm. It almost looked like a scene from The Walking Dead. You had ambulances stuck. The police department. Even fire trucks.”

The milder punch of Winter Storm Juno nevertheless had the crews out working overtime. Lawlor drove from from 7 a.m. Monday (doing pre-storm work) through 1 a.m. Tuesday, caught some Zs, then returned to the wheel for a 10 a.m.-11 p.m. shift. He seemed no more tired for the wear; he’s used to the long shifts. He grew used to them as a teenager when he started working in construction; jobs like pouring concrete to build the tennis stadium in Westville, he recalled, necessitated 16-hour days.

Besides, he said, driving a plow is fun. He feels like he’s helping the city out.

It’s especially fun when — to be honest — he’s driving the prized new monster snow trucks. Which he got to do Monday night and Tuesday before shifting to the Super Duty 550.

They are tremendous trucks,” he said. I keep calling it a Cadillac. Much smoother ride. The blades rotate more evenly; the ride’s less bumpy.”

Jeff is very fair,” he added for the record, about who gets a turn driving the new plows.

Jeff” is Jeff Pescosolido, the city’s new public works director. (He’s pictured observing the Snogo’s maiden voyage with fleet manager Ed D’Angelo.)

The hard part is done,” he said of the first phase of clearing major arteries after the storm. Now comes the fun’ part,” clearing the neighborhoods and more fully plowing the avenues.” The quotation marks around fun were a reference to challenges posed by narrower side streets.

The job got easier this year, thanks in part to those big new trucks,” he said. It worked. We were able a lot to get a lot done” in the first 24 hours.

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