Still snowbound more or less. The trains are running but with lots of delays and very, very crowded. I left my office early last night and it took me quite awhile to get home. I normally take the BM3 or BM4 but I was waiting for nearly an hour before a BM2 showed up and I decided to take it because I did not know how long I would have to wait for a 3 or 4. It was probably a good decision because at almost every stop, people kept asking the poor bus driver if a 3 or 4 was coming. The bus was filled to capacity.
The BM2 is not the best bus for me to take because it drops me off a ways from my apartment. But I figured that was better than waiting for a bus that may never show up. The traffic in Manhattan was not that bad but once the bus got to Brooklyn and turned down Coney Island Avenue, the bus pretty much came to a halt. Coney Island Avenue was a parking lot in both directions. None of the cross streets had been plowed. It took 45 minutes to get from Caton and Coney Island Avenue to Cortelyou Road, when it should have taken about five minutes.
When I was walking home from the bus stop I noticed yet another abandoned NYC bus on Cortelyou between 8th and 7th avenues. I found this strange because no buses go down that street. There were other cars and trucks abandoned on this street as well. It was very creepy, like Steven King's The Stand kind of creepy.
I decided to work from home today. Around 11 am I took a break to get a cup of coffee. The bus was gone but there were still some abandoned cars. I talked to this guy who told me that the bus was towed away this morning. He was off this week for vacation and was helping people push their cars. "I don't understand why the police haven't sealed off these unplowed roads" he told me. "That way people won't try to drive down them and get stuck."
When I went into the market I saw that they were running out of a lot of things, there was no milk, almost no dairy products, no newspapers, basically they were running low on everything because they can't get any deliveries.
I think I'll work from home again tomorrow. Here are some photos I took during my lunch break on Monday. This is Avenue C near Ocean Parkway:
I don't think the city has handled this well at all. Emergency vehicles can't get down these roads, people have died because they couldn't get to the hospital on time, including a newborn baby that had to be delivered in a lobby because the mother couldn't get to the hospital.
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