The Boston Globe plotted and explored the data on the 800 odd pieces of snow clearing equipment used to tackle the Feb 8-9 event. The consultions:

■  One plow driver working for a city contractor was toiling on Massachusetts Avenue and crossed the Charles River into Cambridge, clearing several streets in the wrong city. The driver got lost and will not be paid for any of his work, city officials said.

■  Plows spent most of their time scraping the city’s major streets, which were largely cleared down to the pavement.

■  There was no discernible pattern as to which side streets were cleared— and which weren’t. In some neighborhoods, hills or narrow roads posed an impediment. In others, equipment broke down, and the snow piled up too fast for standard plows to push it.

Sadly, the low resolution graphic  is not very helpful, but it's itneresting that time, rather than location, had a lot to do with complaints from residents. There was a four hour required rest break for contract workers (most of the force in this huge event) that caused the whole city to get "behind" on plowing. The one remedy for the future mentioned in the article was staggering that break across the workforce instead of them all taking it at once. It will be interesting to see what changes, if any, the city makes after its analsyis is completed later this month.

- Boston.com via@GISDoctor

Image by kaitlin.marie licensed under CC-BY-ND 2.0.