This is Washington DC (absolutely egregious omission by NYTimes, IMO), and not only were the roads blanketed with snow but exceedingly slippery a day earlier.
See here for anecdotal reports regarding the city's absurd winter road strategy:
I dunno, not having much of a plan seems like an appropriate measure for storms that only happen every 5 years or so.
Which sounds glib, but it takes a lot of equipment to be able to rapidly deal with snow on a lot of roads, equipment that would be sitting around rusting a lot of the time.
This is more like a 25-year or 50-year event, I'd say. I think this was the #2 or #3 biggest blizzard recorded here. It's ok for something like that to screw things up for a few days.
Which sounds glib, but it takes a lot of equipment to be able to rapidly deal with snow on a lot of roads, equipment that would be sitting around rusting a lot of the time.