Boston officials are starting to open back up the city after nearly two feet of snow fell in the seventh-largest storm the city has ever recorded.
The snow emergency will end at 6 a.m. Monday and public schools will be open Monday morning, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu said Sunday.
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Wu urged residents to help keep sidewalks safe while the city clears the streets at a press conference Sunday with Chief of Streets Jascha Franklin-Hodge and City Council President Ed Flynn.
“We really need everyone’s help to dig out the sidewalk in front of your home and in front of your property, especially so that our young people can access bus stops, walk to school and anyone who is walking around, pedestrians, especially those in a wheelchair or motorized scooter, can get around,” she said.
The mayor asks that residents to do their part to remove snow, but, she urged, don’t clear snow in a way that makes more work for city employees.
“It will make our city crew’s lives a lot, lot easier if, as you’re shoveling, do not shovel back into the street,” she said. “It is incredibly frustrating to clear the roads again and again and then to have some of it come from folks who are shoveling sidewalks into the street. So throw it the other direction.”
Bostonians will have until Monday at 8 a.m. to remove cars from discounted garages before they start getting charged regular rates, and until Wednesday at 6 a.m. to remove space savers.
The blizzard left 23.8 inches of snow over the city, Wu said, making it the second-biggest January storm in Boston history, the seventh biggest in the city’s history overall and tying the record for the largest single-day snowfall.
Chief of Streets Franklin-Hodge said that, as much work has already been done to respond to the storm, there’s more to do. He said it will take some time for things to get fully back to normal.
“The primary goal today is to widen the areas on roadways that are cleared,” Franklin-Hodge said Sunday. “Both for roads and our bike lanes, our goal is to push the snow as close back to the edge of the curb as we can, but that takes time, it takes multiple passes, so that’s really been the focus today.”
He said the city is taking the somewhat unusual step of conducting targeted snow removal operations along major arteries and key pinch points because of the amount of snowfall. Snow will be removed from roadways and taken to nine identified “snow farm sites” around the city.
“Once there, we will wait for either mother nature or our snow melting equipment to melt the snow,” Franklin-Hodge said. “These sites have been chosen so that the melt water from the operation can be directed into our storm water system and will avoid environmentally sensitive areas.”
The chief of streets told GBH News they plan to use sites that are out of the way and most likely won’t be in people’s neighborhoods. They’re working on getting a tenth site, as well.
“This work is going to be ongoing for days ahead. There is a lot of snow out there, and we should expect narrower-than-usual roads,” he said. “So if you are driving, do so carefully, leave yourself plenty of extra time to get where you’re going.”
Franklin-Hodge said the city is coordinating its snow removal efforts with the MBTA to make sure that the buses can continue to run reliably, but he’s encouraging anyone using public transportation or driving to factor in extra time to get where they need to go.
Roughly 32,000 customers across Massachusetts are still without power as of 4:15 p.m. Sunday, according to the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency,including just one in Boston.
GBH News' Hannah Reale contributed to this story.
