Good morning. It’s Wednesday. Today we’ll look at an inevitable consequence of the snow — potholes. We’ll also meet a man who survived being pushed in front of a subway last year.
After all the snow lately, there’s another headache to think about: potholes.
The last several winters have brought so little snow that “it almost seemed like a vacation from pothole season,” said Tom Pratt, a part owner of Scatt Materials, a company on Long Island that manufactures the asphalt used to repair potholes. “Now we’ve been slammed back into reality.”
Melting snow — carrying rock salt and the gooey, slimy gunk from the streets — will penetrate the pavement, where it will freeze and expand.
Pothole season doesn’t usually start until temperatures are in the 40s. Yesterday the thaw part of the cycle was still in the future. The temperature in Central Park sank to 23 degrees, from as high as 30 degrees at 3 a.m., and struggled to climb back later in the day.
But the National Weather Service is predicting a high of 42 for today, after more snow in the morning. Mitchell Moss, a professor of urban policy and planning at New York University and a former director of the Rudin Center for Transportation, said that tire-shredding, maybe even truck-swallowing, potholes wouldn’t be far behind.
“It’s going to be a peak year for potholes, not just a bad year,” he said, adding that today would be “the beginning of the pothole surge.”
Michelle Deme, the digital communications coordinator at Transportation Alternatives, a transit advocacy group, has already seen “large potholes that did not exist” before the Jan. 25 storm as she biked through Prospect Heights and Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn.
She is not surprised that the pavement is becoming pockmarked. “If we look at how much snowfall we’ve received in the past few weeks and compare that to how much has fallen over the last decade,” she said, “you can’t even compare it.”
The string of mild winters has softened the memory of snow in New York. The accumulation in Central Park on Monday, nearly 20 inches, put the latest storm in the all-time top 10. It was a result of what the National Weather Service called a “classic bomb cyclone/nor’easter off the Northeast coast.” A bomb cyclone happens when the air pressure around the storm falls by a certain amount, often as a cold air mass collides with a warmer one.
One city agency — the Department of Sanitation — is responsible for distributing the salt, which punishes the pavement. The pavement is the responsibility of the Department of Sanitation, which has two plants that manufacture asphalt to repair potholes. It says that snow and salt — and chains on bus and truck tires — contribute to wear and tear on roadways.
The acting sanitation commissioner, Javier Lojan, said crews had spread 144 million pounds of salt since Monday and would continue “as long as we need to.” And then the city will deploy its snow melters, to get mounds of snow created by plowing out of the way.
He also said the Monday storm was unusual for localized variations. Each sanitation district on Staten Island recorded 30 inches of snow, while districts in other parts of the city measured not quite half that.
The Sanitation Department also says that it is ready to smooth things over in the spring. Like potholes themselves, pothole repairs tend to be seasonal: For the most part, crews cannot apply hot asphalt in frigid weather, although Mayor Zohran Mamdani made the symbolic gesture of shoveling asphalt on a 43-inch-wide pothole at the foot of the Williamsburg Bridge. But that was on Jan. 6, when the high for the day was in the low 40s.
The Transportation Department has filled more than 170,000 potholes a year lately, by its count, and says it responds to calls to 311 about potholes in two days, on average. The department said last year that it filled 500,000 potholes in the first three years that Eric Adams was mayor, a number based on weekly estimates.
But that’s only on streets. There are parking lots that can freeze and thaw the same way. The owners “will be worried about potholes,” Pratt said — not only as cars drive in but as the drivers walk away after parking.
Weather
Expect snow in the morning before the sun comes out. Temperatures will near 42. Tonight will be partly cloudy with a low around 31.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
Suspended for snow removal.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“We’re packed, we’re packed right now, no room, no room.” — Charles Crawford, describing what he was told when he tried to get on a warming bus in Harlem. He had already been turned away at two shelters that were also full.
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N.J governor sued over ICE enforcement: The Trump administration sued New Jersey and its governor, Mikie Sherrill, a Democrat, challenging an executive order she issued that limits where federal immigration agents can conduct enforcement actions in the state.
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Taking the subway again after being pushed in front of a train
Many people who ride the subway fear being pushed in front of a train. It happened to Joseph Lynskey.
He survived. But he felt as if “a piece of my life in New York had been taken from me,” he said.
Still, he didn’t pack up and leave. He pulled in the circle of his life, no longer going to places he could not walk to — friends’ apartments that were too far away, and tennis courts, music venues and museums that he used to frequent.
Lynskey suffered a fractured skull, four broken ribs, a ruptured spleen and a concussion. Kamel Hawkins, then 23, was arrested and charged with second-degree attempted murder. He pleaded not guilty, but his trial has been delayed while he receives psychiatric care, according to court records.
Slowly, deliberately, Lynskey has returned to the subway after working with a therapist, and wants to be a voice for prioritizing safety. “What happened to me was not an anomaly,” he said. “It was preventable, and it should not happen to anyone else.”
To prod the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the city to make changes, he has filed a lawsuit claiming negligence and disregard for riders’ safety. The lawsuit argues that the M.T.A., which operates the system, and the city, which polices it, brushed aside its own data about the risk of being pushed, especially by people with mental illness. The lawsuit says the transit agency and the city also ignored M.T.A. engineers who suggested ways to improve safety.
METROPOLITAN diary
Special delivery
Dear Diary:
For the love of pizza and my wife, I traveled to Brooklyn Heights to pick up two gluten-free pies. I then wrapped the boxes together with blue painter’s tape to hold them steady for horizontal travel.
I was surprised by how crowded the Manhattan-bound 2 train was when I stepped on it that early Sunday evening, but I managed to find a spot in the corner where I could protect my precious cargo.
When we got to 14th Street, the car got even more crowded as three young men headed to a Knicks game got on. I had nowhere to go when one of them nearly stepped so close as to jeopardize the entire point of my journey.
As the doors began to close, I considered turning the boxes vertically — a sin — when one of the three pulled his friend away from me.
“Hey, man,” he said with a gesture my way. “Respect the pizza!”
— Robert A. Schroeder
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.
Davaughnia Wilson and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].
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James Barron writes the New York Today newsletter, a morning roundup of what’s happening in the city.
The post What Follows a Snowstorm? Potholes. appeared first on New York Times.
