Hello, we're going to get a little bit more.

And welcome back.

Thank you for uh joining us through the uh committee on sanitations uh cyber attack.

That you know Los Angeles really uh came for us.

Um

they

needed all of our snow knowledge.

Um, uh, I will now turn it over to Council Member Sanchez Roso for some questions.

And before I start with questions, I just want to acknowledge the um constituent who was killed in my district uh last week uh by a sanitation truck.

Um and I know the incident is still under investigation, and we'll have lots of time to to discuss, you know, what what could have been done, but I I appreciate so much the the early outreach by you, Commissioner, um and your commitment to you know finding out whatever we can do to prevent that from happening again.

So thank you so much.

Um I want to ask primarily when it comes to snow clearing.

Um we've established, I think, uh as the result of the last hearing that the corner property is responsible for clearing a pedestrian ramp.

Is that correct?

Corner property is responsible for clearing the pedestrian the the path to and including a pedestrian ramp.

That is largely clear correct, yes.

Okay.

And I think at the last hearing we discussed, and it what I don't I don't believe you had been appointed yet.

And so um my sort of pet peeve last year, because of everyone pushing a stroller and having accessibility issues, is that people were clearing the corner, a path to the corner and clearing the pad ramp, but then sanitation was plowing snow such that it piled up right at the end of the crosswalk.

So there would be a mound of snow in between the crosswalk where people were crossing and then the properly cleared, hopefully, pedestrian ramp.

Um hopefully we don't get that level of snow again such that it has mounds sort of staying on the street.

But at the time, uh the acting commissioner was looking into ways that we could sort of make sure that the entire crosswalk was cleared, particularly when the corner property is doing their their piece and clearing the ped ramp.

Um wondering if there's a strategy this year around around that.

Yeah, so to start, I think that's where having the emergency snow shoveler program be much more robust and also having more uh snowblowers and other equipment to be able to respond to those areas more quickly will be really helpful.

Uh we've also um done a lot of work in routing to those corners.

We're trying to avoid the this distinction between it's uh ped ramp versus its uh crosswalk versus we're just treating everything on the corner that connects the sidewalk to the street as a corner.

Great.

And if we get there and it's not shoveled, we will shovel it.

If we get there and it's shoveled, great, we'll move on.

Uh so the thing that we're that we're doing differently from a routing perspective this year is we are trying to prioritize which corners we are doing first with our snow shovelers and our sanitation workers.

Uh we have a couple different criteria that we're using to prioritize those.

Um the first is any corner that is within 200 feet of a bus stop or a subway stop is getting prioritized.

Any corner that is on uh DOT has a sort of five-tier uh ranking of crosswalks.

Um any corner that's in the top three tiers of those rankings, uh, which is the the areas that have the highest uh number of pedestrians, um those are prioritized.

Uh we're also looking at um corners that have the accessible pedestrian indicators, so those are the audible indicators for uh the crosswalk, those are all prioritized.

In total, it comes out to around 20,000 corners, uh, which we understand is still a very small share of all of the corners in New York City.

I think there, you know, there's never a world where we are going to get to everything as a number one priority.

So we have to do some prioritization based on where the most people are moving uh in uh you know in the the days immediately after a storm.

And uh one of the things that we are also doing is working with the mayor's office for people with disabilities and um the department for the aging to make sure that we are uh also prioritizing areas where we know there are high populations of people with mobility challenges or um who rely on mobility devices to get around, so that we are also uh accounting for

that.

If I may, I mean it sounds like you sort of worked out that priority structure, but schools were also what I heard the most of.

And granted, I know it's mostly DOE's responsibility to clear outside of uh school sites, but making sure those corners are clear given the heavy pedestrian traffic, especially during um you know, dismissal and dropping drop-off as well.

Yeah, absolutely.

And I think the the uh New York City Public Schools uh custodial staff do tremendous work to get schools back open, often you know, in the hours or less than a day after the snowfall ends.

Um I think the thing that we that we try to work very close with them on is making sure that the routes to get to that school, either from the the nearest public transit stop or from where uh where parents or buses are dropping off are also clear.

So it's not just the sidewalk immediately proximate to the school, but it's the larger uh area around the school, and that's something that we work very closely with.

Uh Kevin Rand, who's their chief uh operating officer and and his team on.

Great.

Thank you so much.

Thanks, Chair.

Uh I'd like to um recognize that we've been joined by uh Councilmember Vernikov on Zoom.

Uh and I don't think I said uh Councilmember Russler um earlier, but want to make sure.

Um and now I will turn it over to Councilmember Wilson.

Thank you, Chair.

Hello, Commissioner.

Thank you for your testimony.

Just to follow up uh about the pedestrian access, is

uh

with this new robust uh team of shovelers.

Um is there a certain standard that you expect to be able to have pedestrian side uh um the intersections and ped ramps cleared that uh perhaps you weren't able to have in the last time and um and also it if um sorry lost my train of thought when you uh 311 says that I think you have to wait like 72 hours before reporting or accepting uh complaints about uh bus shelters being cleared.