Tuesdays at 3:20 p.m. mean one thing: it’s time to head over to The Ram’s production night. But as I make my way to the Ram Van loading station, I’m stopped in my tracks by piles of snow. Not just any piles of snow: sky-scraping heaps that put the Empire State Building to shame. To quote Michael Rosen’s “We’re Going on a Bear Hunt,” “Can’t go over it! Can’t go under it!” And so, I had to go around it.
The snow piles around the Ram Van loading station are not an anomaly — they’re all over the city, especially around entrances and exits to public transportation. On Staten Island, I had to wait on top of a foot-tall pile of snow for the Staten Island-Manhattan (SIM) express bus back to Manhattan. To board the bus, I had to step right into a puddle that I didn’t realize was there until I was ankle-deep in it.
Clearly, there’s one party to blame: Staten Island Chuck. He predicted that there would be six more weeks of winter, and as the groundhog with the highest accuracy rate in the country, he is at fault for this pileup of snow.
I jest! It is not Chuck’s fault — he is perfect and should never change. The actual culprits? New York City’s Department of Sanitation (DSNY).
I have to say that I am deeply disappointed by the DSNY’s initial response to the snow. Though I live in McKeon Hall at Fordham University Lincoln Center, I am a born-and-raised Staten Islander, and I am appalled by the DSNY’s actions immediately following the biggest snowstorm in a decade. The Department of Sanitation moved Staten Island’s snow-removal crews to Brooklyn, even though Staten Island was still covered in snow. Borough President Vito Fossella went as far as to say to CBS, “Staten Island became second-class citizens a couple of days ago.” I don’t know if I’d go that far, but the response has undoubtedly shown that Staten Island is not high up on the city’s priority list.
However, I will add that since then, the DSNY has reinstated Staten Island back into its snow removal plan. Unfortunately, there’s still no end in sight: Though the DSNY has a plan for clearing the snow, it’s not a short-term remedy to the problems plaguing us. The DSNY’s current plan for clearing the snow involves moving massive piles of snow to snow “hot tubs.” The DSNY only has five of these machines — one in each borough. Each hot tub can melt up to 240,000 pounds of snow per hour, and this melted snow (also known as water) will be spit out into the city’s sewer system. Honestly, this is not a bad plan — it’s all about implementation.
I’d say that the main cause of all these snow problems isn’t the DSNY’s response, but New York City’s snow infrastructure. NYC gets a big snowstorm once a decade, so there isn’t much investment into things like snow hot tubs — again, NYC, a city of about 8 million people, has but five snow melters. Outside of infrastructure, the Department of Sanitation lacks the manpower to move all this snow to the city’s five snow melters. Even with crews working 12 hour shifts, the DSNY has called on New Yorkers to register as Emergency Snow Shovelers and help “remove snow and ice citywide from public areas like bus stops, crosswalks, and fire hydrants.”
Even with all this labor, the operation will certainly take a lot of time. Acting Commissioner of the New York City Department of Sanitation Javier Lojan said to CBS, “We plan on running this system for the next couple weeks. There’s a lot of snow out there.” Yes, Acting Commissioner Lojan, there is.
But this is New York City: the “city that never sleeps.” We don’t have time to wait. And that’s coming from me, a Fordham resident. I’m not affected by the snow all that much, but Fordham’s large commuter student population has been hit much harder.
“All types of transit were bad,” said Mia Bushlyar, FCLC ’29, in a text. “Pedestrian sidewalks were not maintained, making it hard to safely walk places in the borough … There were points when I almost got hit by a car on my way to school.”
And it doesn’t end there. “[Bus transport delays] combined with heavy traffic due to a general negligence of Staten Island … caused me to be late to my class by over an hour,” Bushlyar added.
“[The snow has] affected transit A LOT!!! … the bus would take 40 mins when it’s usually 15 and the trains would be delayed or run local, not express, and sometimes just stop out of nowhere,” said Santiago Porras Ruiz, FCLC ’29, in a text. “[Friday, February 7] was the first day I’ve been on time to an 8:30 a.m. class.”
Luckily, it seems as though Fordham professors have been sensitive to commuter students’ plight. “Professors have been understanding, even offering makeup quizzes for those who missed [them] because of the commute,” Ruiz added.
Overall, the DSNY bounced back after a terrible initial response to the snowstorm. But we still have a few weeks of snow-filled streets ahead of us. While the DSNY should invest in more snow melters for future blizzards, there is more to be done today. After all, you can help! So register online, bundle up, grab a shovel and help out!
Emma Kelner, FCLC ‘29, is an economics major from Staten Island, New York.
