The above video was shot yesterday morning near the Howard Beach station on the currently shuttered A line. The night before, over 400 passengers found themselves snow-bound on a freezing, powerless train, and workers had to face the daunting task of clearing the tracks of snow. There’s something utterly peaceful in the white powder that blankets the train tracks, but in the second video below, that peace is shattered as Transit’s snow removing slowly makes it way toward the Rockaways. It might be fun for snowballs and snow angels, but as New York learned this week, that blizzard can be a powerful force of nature.
Videos of the Day: Clearing the tracks of snow
previous post
1 comment
Weird.
In Boston, when we had a larger snowstorm falling on smaller, lighter trains incl streetcar type lines they simply kept running trains all night so that the snow never became impassible. Even little 22 ton streetcars, in trains of two or three and without plows on the front are quite capable of compacting, swooshing and if need be pressure melting hundreds or thousands of pounds of snow. Boston’s MBTA takes incompetence to an art form; it’s not a mere accident, it’s enforced company policy since the worse it is run the more jobs and overtime are required. But even there they understand how to push snow.
Actually the MTA’s handling of the snow, as exemplified by the stuck train at the airport was not weird, it was pathetic.