Apparently, the city of Philadelphia believes in “snow moving” instead of snow removing. I think a plow might have been down my street once on Saturday, but there’s no evidence that a plow has been through since then. I live on a major secondary street (a fairly busy north-south bus route); I can’t imagine how bad it must still be for people who live on minor streets or those streets too narrow for the plows. Interestingly, the first big snow after Mayor Street was first inaugurated in 2000, he made a big deal of getting some kind of snow removal even on the smallest streets. Too bad for us that he’s now a lame duck, and has a federal corruption probe to think about.
There are lakes of melted mush at pedestrian crossings of major intersections in Center City, though which thousands of people pass daily. With the sewer grates clogged over with ice/snow/whatever, anything that melts is starting to pool. These pools (more like lakes, since they’re far too big to be called “puddles”) are very deceptive. Because it consists of dark water/melted muck from people’s shoes, it looks like it’s frozen. Sadly, some people only realize that it’s not frozen once they’re ankle deep in it. And there are the pedestrian crossings that have not been cleared out, such that the only passable way onto a somewhat clean sidewalk (as opposed to making a new path over/through the snow) is a one person-wide alley that everyone is trying to get through at once. Good thing for me my office permitted us to go business casual this week. That way I only get to ruin khakis, instead of a suit.
