The Death of Snow Plows

It's now May in the Tahoe area.  Rains are falling and temperatures are in the 40s - 50s.  So why am I thinking about snow plows?  Because for at least six months of the year, snowfall is a frequent presence, and without plows to clear the roads, motorized travel can be impossible.  Anything over a few inches of fresh snow can make driving, even for those with four wheel drive vehicles, too difficult to attempt.  Without reliable snow plows, we can rule out delivery of food, medical supplies, gasoline, hardware store items.  In less than a week, store shelves would be empty of items critical to survival.

Do we really have anything to worry about?  Aren't we guaranteed that country and state governments will keep the roads clear... forever?   No such guarantee exists.  Global oil production has been essentially flat since 2005.

Why does that matter in the Tahoe area, or anywhere else, for that matter?  It matters because it indicates that we have reached a peak, a somewhat flat peak for now, but that at some point in the relatively near future (probably within a decade or two), global oil production will start its irreversible trend downward.  When that happens, oil prices, and thus gasoline and diesel prices, will rise.  Well, so what, can't the country just pay more for gasoline to keep the snow plows running?  Yes, of course it can, but only in the short term.  As the years go by and oil prices continue to rise, the use of the personal motor car wil decline and less people will travel to Tahoe as a vacation getaway.  That means less highway taxes for governments and less of a motivation to plow every road currently attended to.

At some point, governments will be forced to ask: What are the most critical roads, because those are the only one we can afford to plow?   That leads to even less people being able to spend some of their winter months in the Tahoe area... which puts less cars on the roads, and provides the governments with even less of an incentive to use snow plows.  Sooner or later - unless residents of snowy areas like Tahoe find ways to pay more money for snow plowing - the road conditions could become undrivable after snow storms.  [The other wild card, besides oil prices, is global climate change.  We'll probably see less total snow, and lighter amounts, but still quite enough to seriously clog the roads for the likely future.]

I'm not predicting that "the death of snow plows" will happen any time soon.  But as energy prices rise, and the overall economy contracts, it becomes more and more difficult for governments to provide services.  Priorities will have to be reestablished.  Can we count on snow plows clearing the Tahoe roads indefinitely?   Look at the struggles to repair public schools, provide medical care for those without insurance, care for the elderly, fight foreign wars, keep Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid alive.  It's not hard to see that in an era of contracting economies, many regional government officials may not see snow plows as a top priority.

So what can we do?  It's time to talk about what are the vital streets, how to keep them clear of winter snow as revenues decline, and what backup plans we will need when these streets cannot always be plowed.  If we don't address this issue, then many parts of the Lake Tahoe community become uninhabitable during winter months.... just as was the case a century and a half ago.  Is this what we want?