There were flight cancellations, the storm in the North East indiscriminate to which companies or passengers it affected. A total of 1,800 snow plows and 500 salt spreaders had to be deployed. But this isn’t the first time that the Christian Science Monitor has had to deal with evaluating cleanup costs. In 2010, cleanup of the snowy streets of New York was valued at one million dollars for snow just an inch deep. The city has recorded up to 25 cm snowfall just this week, the cost of simple cleaning operations could amount to $10 million.
Juno was to be one of the largest to ever hit the city of New York, according to their mayor, Bill de Blasio. In this context, exceptional security measures had to be put in place, as there was a complete ban on driving in certain areas a well as various subway closures. As a result, we’re left with a paralyzed city pending a blizzard that will turns out to be nothing compared to what we expected. This leaves us inside our homes, dumbstruck, where New Yorkers were virtually forbidden leave from or to anywhere. We saw the 10 inches of snow on the streets, rather than the not the 25 inches originally feared. Two days later, and despite some criticism, city officials justified these preventive measures but did not mention the cost of damages.
The blizzard has also resulted in major losses for the airlines, which canceled thousands of flights, around 6,000 for the just January 26th. This left passengers with not but their hands in their pockets, standing around playing Candy Crush and Hearthstone.
According to CNN, the cancellation of a domestic flight costs 6,000 dollars to a company when the passengers should have taken that same flight then cost a total of 58,000 dollars in charges of accommodation, food, transport. Recall if you will a past winter, between December 2013 and February 2014, a million flights were canceled or delayed, which cost $500 million to various airlines. |Ninety million passengers affected by these incidents have in turn cost airlines about $5.3 billion more.
Don’t forget about to account for lost wages. The New York Times didn’t. If even one-tenth of the 3.9 million workers didn’t do their jobs, the losses could amount to $160 million. They’re mainly concerned about employees whose hours were not worked are thus not paid, or employers instead pay their employees even when they have not been able to get to work due to these conditions. You see the problem. Everyone is slowed and stopped everywhere.
But the closure of the New York subway system, the first in 110 years of its existence, Monday night to 9 a.m. Tuesday, after the rush hour, penalized many employees. A whopping 55 percent of the 3.9 million workers in New York use the public transportation to get to their offices. A New York subway station closed due to snow is hardly fathomable. Of course, this does not take into consideration the people who can work from home and is only theoretical. However, it gives an idea of lost wages all throughout the state. What saved some, the decision to close the subway was particularly criticized by most due to impending loss of productivity.
Time is money and the metropolis of New York which produced about $1,400 billion in 2014. If we considered that every day of the year, and made it equivalent in terms of production, the daily loss would amount to $3.8 billion. Luckily, the city was not completely cut off. Some businesses still worked, food was still bought and sold, electricity was still generated and distributed, people still worked from home and others made it to work after the subway re-opened after 9 AM.
But the cost of an almost total paralysis cannot be limited to one city. A magnitude snowstorm would thus lose some $700 million every day to the state, according to a 2014 study by the organization Global Insight. They evaluated the financial consequences including wages, local and federal taxes, trade, and time estimations. The total cost of the New York storm and the measures which should be between $500 million and $1 billion.
