Houston Doesn’t Own Snow Plows—and That’s Okay

There’s a simple reason that two to six inches of snow can be crippling along the Gulf Coast: Most of its cities have no snowplows.

Texas Department of Transportation truck used to apply a brine solution to help prevent ice from sticking on Houston Roads [Houston Chronicle]

The city of Houston faced an unusual challenge last week: an arctic blast brought four to five inches of snow to a city that rarely experiences much winter weather. For the more than seven million people living in the area, it wasn’t just the snow that caused disruption—it was the fact that Houston doesn’t own any snow plows. Residents were advised to wait for warmer weather to melt the snow.

Houston wasn’t alone in how to handle this problem. Just a few hundred miles away, New Orleans was also facing its own winter crisis. The Crescent City is known more for its muggy summers than freezing temperatures but also found itself scrambling to clear its icy streets. Without its own fleet of snow plows, New Orleans ended up hiring 14 plows from an Indiana company to address the snowfall. While the challenges these cities faced were different in scale, they shared the same underlying question from many up north: Why doesn’t the city own snow plows?

From an economic perspective, the answer makes perfect sense. Cities, much like businesses, want to minimize expenses and allocate resources efficiently. For Houston, New Orleans, and other Southern cities, the cost of owning snow plows year-round is simply not justifiable given how rarely they would be used. Let me explain why.

Photos show landmarks across the South covered in snow during its rare winter snowstorm [Source: Business Insider]

It’s All About Fixed Costs vs. Variable Costs

Owning a fleet of snow plows involves fixed costs, which are expenses that don’t change much regardless of how often the plows are used. After a city purchases the equipment, it’s still on the hook for storage facilities and ongoing maintenance to ensure they’re ready when needed. Cities would still incur these types of costs even in years without snow, which means it would have to divert funds from other projects like road maintenance, emergency response, or flood control—services far more relevant to Houston’s climate.

But when it comes time to put those plows to work, there are also several variable costs involved. Variable costs are expenses that increase proportionally with the amount of they’re being used. That includes costs like gasoline to run the plows and paying overtime for city workers. Or in the case of a city without any snow plows, renting them from other cities and companies. These expenses are large this year compared to others, but they don’t impose much of a financial burden in typical years.

And here is where I think the tradeoff can be seen most clearly. If a city like Houston had previously purchased a lot of snow plows, the average cost of removing snow last week would have been fairly cheap. Instead, the city saved money by not purchasing the snow plows and was forced to pay a high average cost to remove snow across the city.

Cities that don’t see a lot of snowfall each year have a choice: keep your fixed costs low by not purchasing many (or any) snow plows and you’ll be stuck with high average variable costs if you ever get hit with a sudden snowstorm. Alternatively, the city can spend a lot of money each year maintaining a fleet of snow plows that never get used but be able to remove snow cheaply if the time ever comes. Houston and other Southern cities (rightly) chose to save money by accepting higher variable costs when snowstorms occur, rather than spreading out high fixed costs over decades of mild winters.

I grew up about an hour from Houston and went to college just north of the city. I consider Houston my home. In my 22 years of living in that part of Texas, I can only vividly remember two snow days. Neither was more than a light dusting that melted away overnight. It felt like an unexpected treat at the time—a chance to stay home from school for a few days. But it wasn’t until I moved to states like Washington, Pennsylvania, and Virginia—where snow is a regular part of winter—that I saw cities fully equipped with fleets of snow plows and salt trucks.

Those snow-prone regions have chosen the opposite side of the tradeoff from cities like Houston and New Orleans. They’ve invested so heavily in snow plows that the average variable cost of removing snow is relatively low. If they didn’t spend as much on those fixed inputs, the average variable cost would be much higher. For cities that get unpredictable snowfalls, minimizing average variable costs is important.

In the South, where snow is rare, the opposite holds. Since Houston and New Orleans don’t own snow plows, they essentially have zero fixed costs when it comes to winter weather response. But when snow does fall, those cities face very high variable costs. And when those costs spike, schools, businesses, and governments often find it cheaper to simply shut down and wait for warmer weather.

I have always loved the map below that shows how much snow it takes for schools to close by county. I think it does a great job highlighting this tradeoff across the states. Snow plows are more common in the north, and schools stay open through several inches of snow. In Southern states, where the average variable cost of clearing snow is much higher, even a light dusting can be enough to cancel school.

In the dark blue counties, it’s going to require more than a foot of snow. to cancel schools. The green counties will shut down for any snow. [Source: Sasha Trubetskoy]

Final Thoughts

Don’t worry, readers—the city didn’t actually make Houstonians wait for the sun to rise before the roads were cleared. Other cities in Texas that do experience more frequent snow already have snow plows in their budgets, and Houston borrowed those resources for a few days. Of course, it likely came at a fairly high cost. But that’s the tradeoff cities (and businesses) have to consider when weighing their fixed investments.

Houston and New Orleans were not “unprepared” in the way critics sometimes claim. They’ve simply made an economic choice that works most of the time—even if it means inconvenience during a rare storm. It’s a reminder that economic decisions often involve tradeoffs.

While it may seem like an unnecessary waste of money to scramble for equipment, the alternative—maintaining a fleet of snow plows that get used once every twenty years—would be even more wasteful. The next time you see snow bring a Southern city to a halt, consider the economic choices at play. What might look like inefficiency at the moment is often the result of careful, long-term planning.

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• The Houston Metropolitan Statistical Area covers 10,062 square miles, an area smaller than Maryland but larger than Massachusetts [City of Houston]

• The highest recorded snowfall in Houston occurred February 14 and 15, 1895 when 20 inches of snow fell on the city [Fox 26 Houston]

• The City of New Orleans paid $500 per hour for the 15 trucks it hired—about $170,000 for 24 hours of plowing [CBS News]

• The infamous Snowpocalypse of January 2014 stranded thousands of people on Atlanta-area roads after two-plus inches of snow cost the city $2.8 million [The Hustle]