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We all expect winter to dump some snow on us from time to time. We just don't ever expect the unpreparedness of others to pile on.
New Yorkers went to be Wednesday night knowing that we were going to get at least one to three inches of snow on Thursday. Our first snow of the season, sure, but we deal with nor'easters every year and the occasional blizzard. By noon on Thursday, the prediction had increased to three to five inches. The first flakes began falling at around 1 p.m.
I know this because I looked at my Weather app. And outside my window. And also because at least one meteorologist told us a much. (He trolled the Mayor and his press secretary today.) Apparently, city officials were looking elsewhere.
Roads were not plowed or treated until hours after the worst of the snow had fallen. It was already too late. Cars had crashed, traffic was backed up for hours and people were stranded. On my quiet street where there is rarely much traffic, cars were at a stand-still for hours. The first plow came down my street a few minutes after midnight.
When I worked in state government, snow was one of the things we feared most. You can't control how much you get -- it could fizzle out or rage into something more -- but you still need to make major decisions regarding the safety of your constituents. Do you ask businesses to send people home early so that rush hour doesn't look like yesterday and you have clear roads for your plows to drive through?
Or do you ride it out and hope for the best? NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio chose the latter. And it did not go well for ol' BdB:
Thursday was the worst commute experience of my life. I work in Brownsville, Brooklyn, and reside in Harlem. On a typical rush hour commuting day, it may take me about an hour and a half, driving locally. Yesterday was something out of the twilight zone. I left the job at 5:30 pm and did not step foot into my home until 12:40 am!!! Seven hours!
Also:
I live and work on Staten Island. My commute is a little more than three miles. I left work at 2:45 p.m. and got home at 6 p.m.
It wasn't just NYC, as the storm crippled cities and towns to the north, on Long Island and in New Jersey. Bob Klemt, the principal of Liberty Middle School in West Orange, NJ, live tweeted the experience of kids having to spend the night in school because buses couldn't reach them.
As one would expect, today was a day of reckoning and it felt like the 20+ City Council members who were stuck in traffic last night each had their own press conference. Mayor de Blasio took swift action, firing one of his commissioners. The Commissioner of the Department of Investigation. Wait, what? Hmm ... guess he thought no one would notice that.
When it came to addressing yesterday's debacle, the Mayor did not apologize. Instead he did this:
[The Mayor] blamed traffic, downed trees, accidents on the George Washington Bridge and elsewhere, and bridge closures for impeding plows, salt trucks, and commuter buses, as well as a late-changing forecast for things like city buses not having chains on their tires.
Except, again, we knew we were getting snow. And everything he listed except for the trees could have been prevented.
To state the obvious, running the Big Apple is not an easy task. Issues will arise -- lots of them -- so it is probably best not to add a bunch of self-inflicted wounds to your week. This has been an especially brutal few days for hizzoner. Let's review:
On Sunday, word that Amazon had chosen NYC as one of two sites for its new offices began to leak. You can't really call it a second headquarters when it's in two different states. That did not go over well once it was confirmed and the details released on Tuesday.
Wednesday brought us a rejection of the consent decree the city signed after admitting it had lied about horrendous conditions at its public housing developments. Rejected because things are actually in worse shape.
Thursday brought us news that the financial black hole that is the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is, in fact, now a larger black hole that swallowed the previous one. This news broke just as the snow began to fall ... and the trains and buses failed us again.
Also, last night? The revelation that Amazon's new office and helicopter playing ground in Long Island City will cost the city 1,500 units of affordable housing:
Plaxall, which owns land around the Anable Basin, was prepared to ask New York City for permission to build up to 4,995 new homes on a 14.7-acre site on the East River, 1,250 of which developers would have set aside for low- and middle-income New Yorkers. Most of that site will now be subsumed into Amazon’s office campus ... Meanwhile, another developer, TF Cornerstone, was poised to build 1,000 apartments on a neighboring site owned by the city’s Economic Development Corporation, of which 250 units would have been affordable. That site, too, will be part of Amazon’s office campus.
Can't wait to see what Saturday will have in store for us.
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