Because yikes.
It’s the Northeast. There are blizzards, yearly. There are procedures in place to minimize disruptions in service and to facilitate clearing the streets once the snow starts falling. But those procedures don’t really help if they’re not invoked. Also not helpful? Having the guy who fucked up Indianapolis’ infrastructure through privatization and governing by prosperity gospel — who also never spent much time in NYC and didn’t know much about it although he’s made reducing the size of the Sanitation Department (which handles snow removal) his special project — be the one in charge of putting the relevant procedures into action. Who then proceeded to fuck off to DC, from which he tweeted his own “Heckuva job, Brownie” statement.
There are a lot of people around who are dismissing New Yorkers’ complaints about the handling of the storm as mere whining, or calling NYers wusses because wherever they’re from deals with snow better, or claiming that this was a “storm of the century” and therefore a slow response was to be expected.
Bullshit.
I spent twelve winters in NYC, with bad snowstorms nearly every year. There were at least three comparable storms that I experienced (for details on comparable storms and city response, see here). And I can’t say that I ever saw one where the major streets weren’t plowed by the end of the snowfall, even if tertiary streets had to wait a while. During the February 2010 storm, for example, I lived on a tertiary street off what was probably a secondary if not primary street, Columbia Street. Columbia was plowed by the time the snow stopped falling; my street was plowed within a day. This time, I’m hearing about PRIMARY streets in Manhattan not being plowed until two or three days after the storm. I’ve got friends who are freezing because the oil trucks can’t get through to their buildings, five days after the snow started.
Someone fucked up, big time. And it’s probably Goldsmith, and Bloomberg for hiring him.
And it’s not like people are just whining. This is a service New Yorkers pay for, willingly and gladly. The complaints are about the fuckups, not the snow. Bloomberg bullied and bought his way into a third term — overriding the will of the people who put term limits in place — on the promise of being the most competent person and necessary to NYC’s well-being. Just 10 months ago, his administration competently handled a storm of similar size and severity. So why the fuckup now? They know how to do this. It’s not like the South, where you get stuff like this when it snows:
This is a snowplow in a ditch in Virginia Beach. They got 13 inches. They don’t expect much in the way of snow removal, because they don’t plan for it since it rarely snows like that. My nephews don’t even have boots. And clearly their snowplow drivers aren’t very experienced. In NYC, you pay for snow removal, and when you don’t get what you pay for, you get pissed. It’s not whining to be pissed when the people you pay to do a job don’t do it, and for no good reason.
I can’t say I’m sorry I’m not in NYC right now (though, honestly, I’d probably still be in Virginia Beach anyway since all the NYC airports were closed). The worst we’re getting where I am is some rain, and localized flooding since no one can seem to figure out that you put the drain in the lowest spot.
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