Category: Weather

Before 9.3 inches of snow and sleet blanketed Philadelphia, in the biggest snowfall the city has seen in a decade, officials were adamant: Shovel or face a fine.

In a news conference last week, Director of Clean and Green Initiatives Carlton Williams said residents would have six hours to shovel after the last bit of snow fell. Failure to do so could result in a $300 fine.

But four days after the last icy flake fell, residents across Philadelphia say the city has set a bad example on the shoveling front, noting various city-owned properties, many of them parks, remain inaccessible for people with strollers, wheelchairs, and those who have limited mobility, and a frigid obstacle for even the most nimble.

“It feels emblematic of the city’s attitude towards its residents, where it’s like they have rules and laws for everybody, but if they can’t manage to do something, it’s like, ‘We don’t have the resources. People need to be patient. We’re trying,’” said Coryn Wolk of Cedar Park.

The 36-year-old said she does have some sympathy for the city, as do many others, because it is responsible for so many sidewalks and buildings, and the icy weather isn’t helping cleanup efforts. But as she walked through Malcolm X Park Thursday, frustration set in as she trudged through a sidewalk of tightly packed, icy snow.

The city did not respond to a request for comment regarding shoveling issues but its rules say paths on sidewalks must be three feet wide. Those on streets with sidewalks less than three feet wide can carve out paths that are one foot wide.

Still, Greys Ferry’s Lanier Park, Ridgeway Park in the Hawthorne section of the city, and Cobbs Creek Park also had sidewalks covered by a trampled layer of gray and yellow snow Thursday. In Center City, outside the former Philadelphia History Museum, another city-owned property, passersby had molded a narrow path that should have been shoveled.

Residents say the problem extends to trolley and bus stops that line streets, describing large mounds of snow they need to climb like athletes to reach their modes of transportation.

Chase Howell, 29, described a herculean snow trudge through Center City with the child she nannies Wednesday. In one instance, she tried to catch the Route 4 bus along Broad and Spruce Streets only to find there was “no way to access the bus lane” because of snow pileups. To her disappointment, the next bus shelter north “was halfheartedly shoveled a foot wide but incredibly slippery.”

In the process of lifting and pushing the stroller, Howell hurt her back, but she said that’s secondary in her whole ordeal.

The city owes residents who use wheelchairs more than this, she said. “City curbs should be shoveled three feet wide just as the requirement is for residences and businesses.”

Those stops and bus shelters are not under SEPTA’s purview. The responsibility of cleanup falls to the city and others who own property next to the stops, according to the agency’s spokesperson Andrew Busch. SEPTA, however, is responsible for the bus stops at the major transit hubs and clearing platforms, entrances, lots, and other areas at train stations.

Walking around West Philadelphia, Razan Idris has seen plenty of businesses and properties that have also neglected to clear their sidewalks. But she thinks the cleanup is part of a larger issue that can be applied to property owners who don’t pick up trash or who let their buildings rot.

“I see it as kind of the same thing, like there is little to no accountability for whoever is owning a building or an area or a lot,” said the 30-year-old.

But ultimately, the buck stops with the city, said Idris.

By failing to care for public sidewalks surrounding parks and municipal properties, other residents feel the city is sending a message that the rules on shoveling aren’t being enforced.

In South Philly, pedestrians trudged through crusty snow on the sidewalk along West Passyunk Avenue next to the former Melrose Diner. The sidewalk looked like it hadn’t been shoveled since the storm hit last week.

The property is owned by M R Realty Limited Partnership, state records show. Business owner Michael Petrogiannis did not respond to a request for comment.

A passerby, who only identified himself as Derek, complained about how some property owners leave their neighbors with the responsibility of making the sidewalks safe for use.

“They don’t come out and shovel,” he said. “So I’m the one shoveling for them.”

Staff writers Henry Savage and Max Marin contributed to this article.

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.

The Streets Department on Tuesday is removing snow that has piled up around City Hall, and the operation requires street closures on nearby blocks, the agency said.

With the region expected to remain in a prolonged deep freeze, there is no chance the snow piles will melt anytime soon. And weather forecasters say the region might be hit with another storm this weekend, so the city is eager to get rid of the existing snow.

The “lifting operation” includes the removal of snow using dozens of vehicles, including excavators and loaders, the department said Tuesday.

The city already has been conducting lifting operations in North Philadelphia, removing snow from Girard Avenue and nearby neighborhoods since Sunday evening, the department said.

Similar operations have been underway in neighborhoods across the city, the department said.

The streets around City hall will be closed through midnight Tuesday.

The closures include:

• Penn Square around City Hall
• North Broad Street from Arch Street to City Hall
• South Broad from Chestnut Street to City Hall
• 15th Street from Arch to Chestnut
• John F. Kennedy Boulevard from Filbert to 16th Street
• East Market Street from 13th Street to City Hall
• West Market Street from 16th to City Hall

The snow is being removed to 37 storage sites across the city, mainly large paved surfaces, the department said.