It is a sentiment long held by residents across Philadelphia, especially those living on side streets, dating back to when snowfall was a more frequent occurrence than it has been in recent years: Don’t expect the city to do a thorough plowing job.
That belief is one that Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle L. Parker has said she is trying to shake with action.
Two days before a storm that whacked the city with 9.3 inches of snow and sleet, Parker, surrounded by the leaders of various agencies, including the Philadelphia Streets Department, vowed to buck precedent on the plowing issue.
“We will make every effort to get to every primary, secondary, and tertiary street in the city of Philadelphia, and that is our standard,” she said, adding it would take “as long as it takes,” citing worker safety.
“But know that we won’t leave any neighborhood, any block, or any community behind.”
Still, residents across the city Tuesday said they were losing patience as side streets and even some secondary streets remained packed with several inches of snow and ice, locking cars in and making navigating intersections impossible.
Fishtown resident Rohan Khadka, 22, was hoping plowing might happen overnight. Instead he woke up Tuesday to streets that were hard for him to cross even with the proper footwear.
“A lot of our roads down here look exactly the same,” he said. “Most of the cleanup that has happened, to my knowledge, has either been by other residents or just cars happening to clean it because they’re using those roads.”
Analysis of the City of Philadelphia’s PlowPHL data, which tracks the movement of plows via GPS data, showed that about a quarter of streets citywide had received no snow treatment at all — including salting or plowing — after the conclusion of the storm Sunday night.
Some areas were worse off than others.
In places like Overbrook and Wynnefield, the city had salted or plowed about 70% of streets by the end of Sunday morning, when the storm began. But the majority of streets in these neighborhoods received no additional plowing or salting since Sunday, according to city data.
The same was true for about a third of streets in South Philadelphia.
The streets department said Tuesday it was deploying over 200 vehicles and excavators as part of a so-called lifting operation. Fourteen teams were fanning across the city to scoop up snow from the narrow roads and load it into dump trucks on nearby primary streets.
The snow hauls were then being taken to storage sites across the city.
Director of Clean and Green Initiatives Carlton Williams drove through parts of South Philadelphia on Tuesday afternoon, as dozens of the side-street-size excavators made their way through the city’s narrowest byways.
“It is the smaller tertiary streets that are challenging,” he said. “There’s more of them. It’s difficult to navigate through those streets.”
As Williams passed a side street with several inches of snow packed, he noted a car illegally parked on the corner, which would make it difficult for machines to get through.
Williams said this storm came with additional challenges. Not only did the snow fall in a condensed period of time, but it was followed by sleet and frozen rain.
“We wouldn’t have many of the challenges that we’re facing today, slowdowns, if those other weather conditions beyond our control did not exist,” he said. “But again, I want to reassure the public that we’re aware. You see us out here today. We’ll be out here tomorrow, and we’ll continue to fight this storm.”
But for Philadelphians waiting for a plow, time is of the essence.
311 ringing off the hook
For Moya Ferenchak, 30, the effectiveness of the operation carries serious health implications. They started pet sitting on the 1500 block of South Capitol, a South Philly side street, for a friend last Tuesday, bringing exactly one week’s worth of food and lifesaving medication — more than they expected to need.
Ferenchak, who lives with a disability that causes limited mobility, cannot shovel. Calling a car not only is expensive but also would require Ferenchak to travel with all their belongings to an intersection that is not blocked by snow.
Adding to frustrations across the city were reports of inundated 311 phone lines.
“I called first thing this morning, and there was a 50-plus-person queue,” Ferenchak said. “Then I called again, and there was like a 70-plus-person queue. I waited for like an hour or so, and then it hung up on me.”
The processing of online 311 tickets has also been a source of confusion for residents who wonder if they are being paid attention to. Williams said the complaints are populating a map used to direct plows to avoid redundancies.
“We’ll take that data and get it within the operation,” he said.
Some homes feel the impact more than others
On the 4800 block of Regent Street in West Philadelphia, Justin Rothrauff described the road as “treacherous” for the mix of families and older residents who live there.
“One of the big problems, besides the street not being plowed, is that the plowing that they have done on some of those primary roads has blocked the secondary and tertiary roads,” the 43-year-old teacher said, adding even if he could somehow get his car out of his block, he is not sure he would make it back in.
While Rothrauff had heard of people paying to have their roads shoveled, he feels no one should have to.
“I refuse to pay anyone money, I pay enough taxes in the city,” he said.
For some Philadelphians, some information could go a long way. A much-touted live map of plow operations has been reported for mistakenly listing some streets as plowed, according to the residents who live there.
Krista Dedrick-Lai, 45, a South Philly resident, hopes the city will do more to tell people about plowing statuses, and explain why their streets are still covered in snow days after the storm, even if the answers are not what they are hoping to hear.
“Sometimes context can make everyone feel better,” she said, noting her block on Federal Street got a plow Monday and Tuesday, but the snow banks had blocked cars in.
Fortunately, she said, she and her husband have not needed to leave their house to work or to help their child learn through third-grade virtual learning modules.
Others, however, do not have that flexibility. Making matters worse, more snow may be on the horizon this weekend.
