DSNY app inaccurate

182nd Street in Fresh Meadows not looking too plowed @NYCSanitation @NYCMayorsOffice pic.twitter.com/aBOODkY7oK

— (((Rory Lancman))) (@RoryLancman) January 8, 2017

From NY1:

A Queens councilman says the city's PlowNYC program did not measure up during this weekend's snowstorm.

City Councilman Rory Lancman uploaded videos on Twitter showing snow-covered streets in his district.

He said many of them had not been plowed in hours, or at all.

This, despite the streets being marked as recently cleared on PlowNYC - the city's public database that tracks which streets have been plowed.

Bayside curb repairs taking forever

From the Times Ledger:

Three years after city snow plows destroyed the curb in front of All Saints Episcopal Church in Bayside, the Department of Transportation still has no plans to repair the damage, even after the intervention of a higher power — the neighborhood’s assemblyman.

During the series of blizzards in the winter of 2013–2014, snow plows from Department of Sanitation battered the curb by the church into gravel, grinding some sections down to little more than a sliver of rough concrete. All Saints, located at 214-33 40th Ave. reached out to state Assemblyman Edward Braunstein (D–Bayside), who spoke with DOT about repairing the curbs. The agency made him wait a year for a response.

“My office contacted the NYC Department of Transportation in 2014 regarding curbs that were damaged at All Saints Church by the Department of Sanitation,” Braunstein said. “On Feb. 13, 2015, DOT notified me that All Saints Church would be added to its ‘curb database for repair under a future curb repair contract.’ In light of the fact that the curbs were damaged by a city agency, DOT should commence with the repairs as soon as possible.”

But nearly two years after committing to fix the damage, the DOT has not yet scheduled repairs.

“NYC DOT is aware of the curb condition at this location, which has been added to the agency’s curb database for repair under a future curb repair contract when resources become available,” a DOT spokeswoman said.

We were victims of "sectoring"

From the NY Times:

Well before the blizzard of 2016 descended on New York, city officials had prepared a new blueprint to tackle the accumulating snow, creating new plow routes and a different hierarchy of roadways.

The plan was called sectoring, an approach that would replace the city’s pecking order of primary, secondary and tertiary roads — a ranking that came into focus after a blizzard paralyzed parts of the city in December 2010 — with a two-tier system.

The Sanitation Department’s new plowing hierarchy began as a pilot program that was expanded across all of Manhattan, Queens and Staten Island, according to the city’s published snow plan. (The new approach was also used in two small sections of the Bronx and Brooklyn.)

Under the new approach, which had been tested in areas of the Bronx and Staten Island in the last two years, the department replaced the old three-tier system with two levels: critical and sector. The critical streets correspond roughly to primary streets in the old classification, still used on the city’s PlowNYC map; the sector streets include both secondary and tertiary roadways.

The new system was an outgrowth of the problems faced by the city in 2010, when many Brooklyn streets became buried in snow and took days to clear. The idea, sanitation officials said, was to devise routes that would keep drivers, as much as possible, on roadways that they are assigned to plow. Many of the old routes forced drivers to spend part of their time along streets they were not assigned to plow so they could reach their appointed streets.

The union representing sanitation workers said that while sectoring appeared to work in most areas of the city, the new routes might have been too long in Queens.

In previous years, the city used a contractor, CSB Contractors, to plow minor side streets in those areas. This year, the Sanitation Department assumed responsibility for all streets in those neighborhoods, as well as about 50 miles of tertiary roadways in Brooklyn formerly handled by the company.

The city kept a different contactor, Natural Landscapes, for areas in southern and eastern Queens, including Flushing and Jamaica. Those areas generated fewer complaints, according to the borough president’s office, which heard from many irate Queens residents.

DeBlasio realizes he left Queens buried in snow

From PIX11:

Mayor Bill de Blasio acknowledged at a news conference Sunday morning that more needs to be done — and fast — to dig out the borough of Queens, where large swaths of road are still buried in snow from the historic blizzard.

De Blasio, who visited Queens Sunday morning, said the goal is to have streets cleared by Monday morning in time for the commute and the rolling of buses in a borough where they are so important. Schools will be open.

"Queens is a very big borough," and each storm is different, the mayor said, but what is being done differently this time is a new "agile strategy" to respond to problems in Queens, where 850 plows are now at work.

De Blasio said resources are being funneled from Manhattan, the Bronx and Brooklyn into Queens, where residents have been complaining about lagging cleanup efforts. Queens has historically posed a challenge to the Sanitation Department and City Hall after major snowstorms, and famously hurt Mayor John V. Lindsay's reputation in 1969 and Mayor Michael Bloomberg's in 2010.

Queens saw more snow than any other borough in this weekend's storm, with Kennedy Airport getting more than 30 inches. Queens also has more roads to clear than any other borough.

Done in by a snow plow

From WPIX:

This is a winter Allyson Healy would like to forget. But she probably won’t.

Back on Jan. 24, while the school speech therapist slept in her Rego Park apartment, it was snowing outside. New York City snowplows were out clearing the streets. Allyson had quite a sight when she woke up and saw her Nissan Altima.

“When I saw it in the morning from my bedroom window it was perpendicular to the street,” Allyson told me. “It had been pushed half up into the sidewalk half into the street!”

She had no idea what happened. So she got her building super to check the exterior security camera. “What happened was is it was hit by a snow plow that was turning the corner…Dented the bumper, popped it out. Cracked the mirror here. A multitude of scratches and gouges on the exterior of the bumper.”

The snow plow just kept going, leaving her car out in the street and no information about who did it. Allyson’s estimate is that it will cost about $3,000 to fix her car.

City taking its sweet time to fix Bayside curb

From the Queens Chronicle:

Members of All Saints Episcopal Church in Bayside have been waiting two years for the city to repair their damaged curbs, but Department of Transportation officials say if they’re unhappy to sue the city.

It all started about two years ago, according to member and community activist Jack Oshier, during the winter when Department of Sanitation trucks plowing snow got too close to the curbs and damaged them.

There is no parking around the church, located at 214-35 40 Ave., allowing the plows closer access to the curbs than usual. Oshier said further damage was inflicted last winter.

He has reached out to city agencies and elected officials with little success. “We finallly sent a letter to the city comptroller putting in a claim but that could take years,” Oshier said.

Assemblyman Ed Braunstein (D-Bayside), who used to live across the street from the church, also got involved and was last told by the DOT that the curbs would be repaired, but the agency was unable to say how long that would take.

A spokesman for the DOT told the Chronicle there is no outstanding Notice of Violation or sidewalk conditions at the property, although the agency did receive notification of this condition, which cited snow plow-related damage to the curb.

The case of the flying garbage can

From PIX11:

A freakish city snow plow accident Thursday night sent a terrifying avalanche of ice and debris into a Queens restaurant, shattering windows and sending patrons scrambling for their lives, injuring several people.

“It kind of sounded like a bomb went off. It was the loudest noise I ever heard in my life and I was typing in an order,” said employee Blane Boyd, who saw glass flying across the restaurant, Exo Cafe, on Austin Street in Forest Hills.

The Department of Sanitation told PIX11 News it has conducted an investigation of the accident, which happened shortly before 11 p.m., and is seeking disciplinary action against the operators of the equipment.

Police said the truck hit a garbage can full of ice, which was propelled into the restaurant’s vestibule. The plow operator left the scene of the accident, but was immediately located, police said.

Who is responsible for plowing a community driveway?

Hey crapper-

I've got a good story for you, with many guilty parties - both city government and snobbish homeowners play a role, with hapless renters of course being screwed.

Over here in Astoria, there are a ton of alleyways. Household trash is picked up in these alleyways instead of out front on the street like most other parts of the city. Let's say you're a renter who doesn't have direct access to the alleyway - you have to carry your trash to the nearest alley leading behind your house and leave it behind the house.

Carrying your trash all over the way around the block is annoying enough on the best of days, but in the winter it is absolutely batshit horrible. Absolutely none of the homeowners shovel the alleyways. The city has the alleyways listed on their snow removal map - but they absolutely never plow them - EVER. I've lived over here for a good 10 years and have never seen a single homeowner so much as shovel the space directly behind their houses. There is no drainage at all - so even when the snow melts it just pools in potholes (that no one fixes) and then ices over so every alleyway is just a long stretch of ice ice and more ice. It is very similar to trying to walk around Willets Point - you have to watch your step and pray you don't slip and fall - because unlike willets point no one will see you fall and you could end up laying there for who-knows-how long for someone to notice. You could hit your head and die back there and not be found until the next trash pickup day.

At the very least, this is a large lawsuit waiting to happen.

The problem is that no one knows who actually owns these alleyways - none of the homeowners will admit it falls into their property line and the city never maintains them. I'm surprised the local trash men haven't complained to their superiors because they unfortunately have to walk and drive through twice a week collecting the trash. If and when they fall and go on disability, who's stuck paying the bill? You and I.

I know there's quite a few other neighborhoods in the city where trash is removed via alleyways - do they have the same problem we have, or is this just another huge example of astoria property owners who refuse to shovel anything, the city hall not giving a crap about Queens?

Do me a favor if you run with this - leave my name out of it since unfortunately I have to live over here a little while longer and have no desire to deal with these asshole homeowners in person. Everyone knows everyone around here. When you complain to them, they all pretend to not know English and then gossip to their neighbors at the local private social club.

-Anonymous

PS: attachments: a map of where the alleys are, and of course photos. The map is of course NYC's plowing map, screen grabbed direct from their website. The red lines are where the alleyways are. There's probably hundreds of homes here where you have to go to the alley to leave the trash, and only residents on the first floor have access to the alley without walking all over to get back there...

Is PlowNYC full of sh*t?

"Hey Crappie,

If you look at the "Plow NYC" website in the Richmond Hill area, you'd have to surmise that they're airlifting plows in. There are one way streets that are unplowed then suddenly, the next block shows it was plowed in the last hour. Magic? Aliens? Maybe "Plow NYC" is a work of fiction?

Just sayin'..." - anonymous

Some neighborhoods not feeling the love today: Briarwood, Maspeth and Willets Point. (Purple means they were plowed 12-24 hours ago.)

He's ready for a freak snowstorm!

Dude, it's July.