Snow removal in New York City is incredibly inefficient and unfair.
In a city with 2 million drivers and 6 million walkers, prioritizing the largest, least fortunate majority is crucial. Priority should be given to clearing the bus lanes, corners, and emergency lanes as well as the bike and walk lanes. It is pointless to clear so many car lanes in priority since the parked cars are buried under mounds of snow.
It’s time for New York City to adopt world-class snowplowing techniques and place priority where they belong. At the moment, the plows shovel all of the snow to the sides, onto bus stops, corners, sidewalks, and parked cars. The Sanitation Department then employs laborers to clear the snow that they themselves accumulated.
This need not be the case.
Turning the snowplow’s blades away from the curbs, bus stops, sidewalks, and parked autos would be simple. In Montreal, the snow that has been cleared is heaped up in the center lane and quickly removed by trucks.
Snow on sidewalks is cleared in several US cities. The city should clear them in all of the core business districts, as well as bus stops and subway entrances, using the bike lane plows. At the moment, the walk lanes cannot be cleared because so many businesses are closed. Nor can they be cleared up by fines in a timely manner.