300 ‘ambassadors’ to chip away at ice on Philly’s crosswalks

Those stubbornly frozen crosswalks with mounds of snow and ice across Philadelphia are getting chipped away with the assist of a 300-person workforce, starting Tuesday.

The 300 ambassadors, as they are called, are tasked with manually breaking up ice at crosswalks and streets in residential neighborhoods, according to Mayor Cherelle. L Parker.

“We are not resting and stopping until every street in the city of Philadelphia is walkable and drivable, and that people feel it when they are driving it and they see it in their neighborhoods,” she said Monday, highlighting the nonstop work municipal workers had been doing since the largest snowfall in a decade blanketed the city with 9.3 inches on Jan. 25.

» READ MORE: Many Philly side streets remain full of snow and ice days after Sunday’s storm

The dayslong cold snap that followed, however, has complicated dig-out efforts for the city and led to widespread complaints from residents. Photos of commercial corridors with piles of ice on crosswalks, unplowed side streets, untreated SEPTA bus and trolley stops, and unshoveled sidewalks next to public parks and recreation centers flooded social media after the storm as the city asked for patience.

» READ MORE: Philly threatened shoveling fines. Then it left its own parks and properties snowy and icy.

Still, Parker said Monday that the city has melted 4.7 million pounds of snow, put down 15,000 tons of salt on streets and roadways, and treated at least 85% of streets at least one time.

The city has deployed snowplows, compactors, front-end loaders, backhoes, and a snow melter that came from Chicago, the mayor said. And just this weekend, the city made a “coordinated pedestrian safety push,” working across city agencies as well as SEPTA and the Philadelphia School District to clear bus stops, school crossings, crosswalks, and ADA ramps.

The Philadelphia Streets Department has also tapped into its Future Track Program for snow-removal efforts. The trainees are typically at-risk young adults who are not enrolled in higher education and are unemployed. They get job experience, as well as other services, and they help in beautification projects. In the snow cleanup, Parker said, the trainees cleared more than 1,600 ADA ramps.

Carlton Williams, the city’s director of clean and green initiatives, said the hundreds of workers aiding in the cleanup have made significant progress in areas like North Philadelphia; South Philadelphia, which was the epicenter of 311 complaints days after the snowfall; and Manayunk, which posed a challenge because of its hills.

He noted the complexity of the city’s narrow residential streets, which required bringing in specialized equipment, and where he previously said cleanup was further complicated by illegal parking.

Throughout the week, the city had also conducted lifting operations where machines dumped snow and ice into dumpsters to be hauled to storage sites across the city.

A Facebook video on the mayor’s social media page, along with responses to clips of the dig-out update shared online, offered a glimpse of how residents feel. Parker, many said rising to her defense, cannot control the freezing temps. Others were less forgiving, listing their blocks as forgotten sections in the cleanup.

Philly is far from alone in the continued cleanup efforts hampered by below-freezing temperatures. At the request of Washington, D.C., officials, 50 National Guard members were deployed over the weekend to help clear schools of snow. Baltimore was able to get a snow melter on loan from D.C. this week, a machine officials told WBAL-TV the city had not needed in a decade.

Even New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who received generally good marks on cleanup from the media in the early days after the storm, was pressed by reporters Monday on lingering snowbanks and delays in trash pickup.

In Philadelphia on Tuesday, the city conducted a snow-clearing operation along a 1.5-mile stretch of Broad Street through 6 p.m., towing cars along the street in South Philly to make way for equipment on the major corridor.

City workers received the slightest respite as they continued snow-clearing efforts as temperatures reached the mid-30s Monday and Tuesday.