NYC Snowstorm To Make Travel 'Very Difficult,' City Warns

SOHO, NY — New York City's first snowstorm of the season will create "very difficult traveling conditions" for drivers on a typically busy Saturday afternoon, the city's sanitation commissioner said Friday.

The city has suspended alternate-side parking rules for Saturday, while the Department of Sanitation is loading up hundreds of plows and salt-spreading trucks to clear the roads of up to six inches of snow, Commissioner Kathryn Garcia said.

"This is not a drill," Garcia said. "We are getting ready. We are plowing up."

A winter storm on its way to the East Coast is expected to dump four to six inches of snow on Brooklyn and Queens and two to four inches on Manhattan, the National Weather Service says.

Once the first flakes hit the ground, likely early Saturday morning, the sanitation department will start deploying its 693 salt spreaders to pre-treat the roads. Up to 2,000 plow trucks of various sizes will be ready to hit the road once two inches of snow accumulate, Garcia said.

The snow is expected to start piling up in the late morning and will be heaviest in the early afternoon, when traffic is typically heaviest on Saturdays, Garcia said.

The city's Office of Emergency Management issued a travel advisory Friday afternoon for 6 a.m. Saturday through 6 a.m. Sunday. Anyone in the city should stay off the roads and use mass transit if possible, Garcia said, but if you can't avoid driving, "be prepared for the fact that conditions may deteriorate."

"Plan accordingly — if at all possible, if you can do your shopping earlier in the day rather than later in the day, when we anticipate the storm to be hitting at its fullest, that probably would be better," Garcia said.

Sanitation workers will start working 12-hour shifts at 7 a.m. Saturday. They'll collecting trash and recycling as normal on Saturday in trucks with plows attached, Garcia said. But salting and plowing can impact pickup schedules, so workers might be stopping by some blocks at different times than usual.

The city has $84.1 million budgeted for snow removal work this year, Garcia said. The Department of Sanitation has more than 319,500 tons of salt on hand to treat New York's 19,000 miles of roadway, with contracts in place to bring in 550,000 tons more if needed.

The department has brought in new technology to help workers treat and clear streets more efficiently. Every salt-spreading truck now has a Magellan GPS device that give turn-by-turn directions for every route. That means drivers no longer have to follow five-page printouts describing every turn on paper, sanitation officials said.

"We can get to your block quicker," she said. "We can get through the whole city quicker, more efficiently."

The devices will help drivers who normally work in one neighborhood quickly adapt to routes in other areas, Sanitation Chief Shari Pardini said. The plow trucks will get the devices if they work well in the salt-spreaders, officials said.

The department also tweaked the technology behind its interactive PlowNYC map, which shows the location of each plow and when every street was last plowed. The system now works around overhead train tracks and other objects that block GPS signals from the trucks, distorting what the map shows online, Garcia said.

While the city takes care of the roads, New Yorkers (or their landlords) are still responsible for clearing the sidewalks in front of their homes. When the snow stops, you'll have up to 14 hours to get out there and shovel or risk getting a ticket from the Department of Sanitation.

And parking meter rules will still be in effect Saturday, even though alternate-side rules are suspended.

For more info about tomorrow's storm, visit the "Severe Weather" section of the city government's website."

(Lead image: The New York City Department of Sanitation will have 693 salt-spreading trucks ready to hit the road by Saturday morning in anticipation of the season's first snowstorm. Photo by Noah Manskar)