Welcome to the winter blunderland!
New Yorkers are feeling left out in the cold more than a week after fierce Winter Storm Fern dumped over a foot of snowon the city — and left behind iceberg-sized snow piles blocking roadways, bike lanes, sidewalks and parking spots.
A massive dirt-encrusted mound of plowed snow in Midtown at 43rd Street and 10th Avenue drew frustration from locals such as Michelle Perera, a doctor who called the city’s slow clean-up response cold comfort.
“There is a lot of snow still left on the streets and now with trash pickups, it just feels like it’s magnified and it’s really unsafe and unsightly,” she said.
Drivers have been stymied along Eighth and Ninth avenues in Midtown thanks to unruly frozen snow piles blocking entire lanes.
The wintry woes come as Mayor Zohran Mamdani faces heat for growing cold-related deaths, trash mounds and other lingering problems following the two-day squall that started Jan. 25.
Mamdani updated New Yorkers on the city’s storm response during an unrelated event in Far Rockaway, concentrating on the 59,000 crosswalks and 12,000 fire hydrants cleared by sanitation.
Sanitation has melted 183 million pounds of snow and laid out 227 million pounds of salt, Mamdani said — but some lifelong city dwellers weren’t buying Hizzoner’s triumphant assessment.
“I’ve never seen this in my life, the piles and everything,” said John Michael Bolger, 70. “This guy, Mamdani, is full of s–t.”
“He’s more concerned about getting jackets that look cool when he does press conferences,” Bolger added, dinging Mamdani’s custom-designed Carthartt that received fawning coverage in the New York Times — as the tally for those who’ve died outside since the storm rose to 17 Wednesday.
Beyond dragging down drivers, the snowy streets have turned into treacherous slip-and-slides.
“I’ve slipped. I’ve fell off my bicycle,” said food deliveryman Juan Santos, 47, who laughed while doing a drop-off in the Financial District. “The food is all over the street. I wear a lot of clothes so I feel a little pain but it’s not too bad.
“Sometimes they don’t plow the bike lane and I have to ride in the street and that’s dangerous. Sometimes when they plow, they move the snow to the bike lane and leave it there. Where are we to ride?”
CitiBike has also been crippled by the storm, with about 500 of its 2,925 active stations across the boroughs cleaned up, a rep said.
William Rogers, 67, an architect who lives in FiDi, lamented that crosswalks remain largely blocked, forcing pedestrians into the street.
“I caught a lady yesterday who slipped and almost fell backwards, and she landed right in my lap,” he said. “I caught her. This was on Broadway and Warren Street. She wasn’t injured and she thanked me sweetly.”
A sanitation spokesperson blamed New Yorkers illegally shovelling snow into bike lanes for the problems.
“Sanitation Workers and Emergency Snow Shovelers are continuing to remove snow and ice from bike lanes every day – no waiting for Mother Nature here!” the spokesperson said in a statement.
He referred other questions to the city Department of Transportation, which did not return a message.
Parking has also proved a perpetual pickle for motorists in the post-storm morass.
Naadiya Yasin, an attorney, sat at the corner of Hoover Avenue and Queens Boulevard, stewing after spending 15 minutes circling the streets around the nearby courthouse for a parking space.
“I go to courthouses in all boroughs, and everywhere I go, it’s an additional 30 minutes to an hour looking for parking, which has delayed court appearances, delayed travel to and from work,” Nasin said.
“Judges are yelling at me for not getting to court on time.”
Jeff Smith, 32, a construction worker from Kew Gardens, managed to snag a parking spot on Queens Boulevard.
He said the streets aren’t as brutal as the first week after the storm, but they’re no winter picnic.
“The mayor should have done a better job,” he said. “There’s no parking at all, and you have to fight for yourself.”
One of countless piles of plowed snow littered across the five boroughs sits in front of George’s Hair Styling in the Financial District, where owner George Kulangivey has received a steady stream of cancellations.
The atrocious road conditions citywide and the snow pile have dealt a one-two punch to the business, Kulangivey said.
“My customers, they don’t want to jump 2 or 3 feet over snow and garbage to come in here,” he said. “They are afraid because it’s dangerous.
“I have a lot of cancellations, not because of the cold but because of the situation on the road. Some are not cleaned, it’s slow going. My customers, they come from Queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island. They can’t even take the ferry.”
The city is melting more than 30 million pounds of snow every day in 13 different melters, a sanitation spokesperson said.
Alternate-side parking remains suspended through Sunday, meaning streets may not be completely cleared until then.
New Yorkers are encouraged to dig out their cars as temperatures rise above freezing this week, sanitation officials said.
Additional reporting by Craig McCarthy
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