SIDEWALKS ARE A WHITE FRIGHT
Where are city workers with shovels?
New Yorkers faced $150 fines if they didn’t have their sidewalks cleared by the morning after Thursday’s “bomb cyclone” — but pavements outside many city properties remained covered in snow all day.
Salty pedestrians who had to trudge through the slush weren’t digging the lack of digging and salting Friday, after the wild weather dumped up to 13 inches of powder across the city.
“I’m pissed! I can barely walk out here. This is absolutely the kind of thing the city has to do,” huffed Bedford-Stuyvesant resident Erin White, 54, as she hobbled through the snow outside Brooklyn’s McLaughlin Park with a broken foot. “They’ve got people who clean the parks, why can’t those people shovel?”
New Yorkers were supposed to have the paths outside their buildings shoveled by 10 a.m., according to the Department of Sanitation — 14 hours after the snow officially stopped falling.
But the city clearly missed its own deadline, as walks remained unshoveled at least outside Washington Square Park, Detective Joseph Mayrose Park in Park Slope and Whitman Park in Downtown Brooklyn.
And Friday’s slush was primed to become slippery ice by Saturday morning, with lows of 0 degrees and a windchill of minus-23 forecast.
“They should have shoveled it. We almost fell up there,” said Cordell John, 56, as she and the 3year-old girl she was looking after tried to pass Detective Joseph Mayrose Park. “A stroller couldn’t come this way.”
Agencies are responsible for shoveling outside their own properties, Sanitation Department spokeswoman Belinda Mager said. Whitman Park is right next door to the city’s Office of Emergency Management, which had clear sidewalks — while the pavement on the Adams Street side of the green space had only been plowed halfway.
“That’s the Parks Department. When they don’t plow those spots, that’s all on them,” one OEM worker told The Post.
A Parks spokeswoman said the agency is doing its best to clear its more than 2,000 miles of pathways across the city. “NYC Parks crews and our partners are working diligently to remove snow on the perimeter of parks following yesterday’s storm,” spokeswoman Crystal Parks said.
Workers prioritize “transportation hubs and civic centers, hightraffic sidewalks and malls and jointly operated playgrounds adjacent to schools” before moving on to other thoroughfares, she said. Sanitation Department workers focus their efforts on crosswalks, fire hydrants and bus stops, according to Mager — although bus riders tweeted plenty of gripes.
“Hey @NYC_DOT why are all the bus stops in Bay Ridge (and the rest of the city) covered in snow?” fumed Twitter user Bay Ridge Drivers, alongside photos of four separate bus stops in the Brooklyn nabe.
Meanwhile, two Long Islanders died doing their own snow removal work — with a man and a woman suffering heart attacks while shoveling and snow-blowing respectively, authorities announced Friday. The “Blizzard of 2018” was worse than predicted, dumping up to 16 inches of snow in some areas, Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone said.