But a few dedicated snow machines would make the work go so much faster. They’re more effective also because they actually remove the snow (in concert with a heap of regular construction dump trucks) rather than just shoving it onto the gutter/sidewalk. Sure, in NYC it melts fairly quickly, but for main avenues it would be a huge improvement.
"A few" undersells the scale of DSNY's operation. They've already got a few hundred specialized salt/plow trucks on top of the thousands in the mixed garbage truck fleet, and a couple dozen snow melters, about 80 dump trucks, and a few hundred front-end loaders. They recently bought about 50 narrow plows just for bike lanes and bridge sidewalks.
After heavy snow are mostly plowed, its a very common sight on busy city blocks to see snow hauling/removal and melting happening overnight.
Its just that nothing related to their snow removal obligations is small stuff.
And this article makes it seem like a huge investment, but in reality these workers do other jobs most of the year, in construction, roadworks, gardening, waste management, etc.
It really seems like NY are wedded to their old ways -- something that was a sensible reuse of an asset (garbage trucks) has solidified into the only possible way to do it. It might be bureaucracy and unions, unimaginative leadership, or inability to allocate the cost due to politics, but it isn't technical.
The first step is informing citizens when their streets will be cleared. In dense, downtown neighborhoods, most people park on the street and their cars need to move. No parking signs get installed block by block and notifications go out through the city-maintained snow removal app, InfoNeige (equivalent to InfoSnow in English). Municipal lots are opened up with free parking, and as one final warning, tow trucks blare a siren before hauling away any outstanding vehicles.
