City's Snow Response A 'Disgrace,' Uptown Pols Say

WASHINGTON HEIGHTS, NY — Mayor Bill de Blasio may attribute Thursday night's poor snow response to bad luck, but Uptown politicians didn't hesitate to lay blame on the city government. City Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez and State Assemblywoman Carmen De La Rosa held a press conference Friday morning near the George Washington Bridge to call the city government's handling of six inches of snow a failure.

"What we know is that last night, yesterday, the government failed New Yorkers," Rodriguez said. "We have to learn from that situation."

Rodriguez, who chairs the council's transportation committee, said that a poorly-handled response by city agencies such as the Department of Sanitation, the NYPD and the Department of Transportation, put New Yorkers' lives at risk Thursday night.

During his own "nightmare commute" — it took the councilman nearly 10 hours to drive from Brooklyn back to his Washington Heights home — Rodriguez witnessed elderly people and parents with children abandon their cars in traffic jams to walk on ice-covered roads and sidewalks.

"We can do better, and we should do better, and we should be vigilant of our agencies and the government so that they can work for the people," Rodriguez said. "The city government should be prepared to handle a few inches of snowfall in a city like ours. We have done it before, it should have happened yesterday."

Rodriguez announced Friday that City Council Speaker Corey Johnson has approved holding council hearings to determine exactly what went wrong with the city's response to Thursday night's storm. The hearings will be led by the council's transportation, sanitation and public safety committees.

City Councilman Antonio Reynoso, chair of the council's sanitation committee, said Friday that "the city of New York should not be upset, it should be embarrassed" that six inches of snow crippled the city's transportation system.

Reynoso said that the only positive from Thursday's snow response is that the city can learn from its failures in order to improve for this season's next storms.

The Brooklyn councilman described the George Washington Bridge as the "epicenter" of the city's transportation problems Thursday night. A multi-vehicle collision on the icy bridge resulted in some motorists being trapped on the span for more than six hours.

Officials said Friday that the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which is responsible for maintenance on the bridge and other transit infrastructure such as the Lincoln and Holland tunnels, was also unprepared for Thursday's storm. State Assemblywoman Carmen De La Rosa, who sits on the legislature's corporations committee, said that state officials will aid the city in determining what led to Thursday night's widespread problems.

De La Rosa also said that Thursday night's issues present an opportunity for the state legislature to bring up possible solutions to traffic in Manhattan such as congestion pricing.

"Upper Manhattan is used to traffic — we're at the foot of the bridge and this is where we live," De La Rosa said. "But what happened last night wasn't just congestion, it was a disgrace, it was an utter failure of government and emergency response. We know that our communities are asking us for answers."

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