The Silver Spring Penguin

A few days after December’s snowpocalypse, a middle-aged man using an electric wheelchair was spotted on East-West Highway in South Silver Spring, attempting to navigate a narrow strip of bare sidewalk. He wasn’t having much luck.

Photo: Dude, what's the deal here? Credit: J. Deseo/SSP.

After squeezing past snow piles nearly as high as his head, he encountered unshoveled sidewalk too sloppy for his wheelchair to manage. He was forced to throw the wheelchair in reverse, back the way he came, to find a clear path.

That particular sidewalk has since been cleared, but one downtown sidewalk (photo) remains unshoveled two weeks after the snowpocalypse buried the hood under 20 inches of snow.

Along Colesville Road, outside a short office building and yards from a bus stop, a snow pile blocks passage for peds on foot and wheels. Ironically, the sidewalk around it and an adjacent parking lot are clear slabs of concrete and asphalt.

The storm’s cleanup left a nasty, metallic taste on the palettes of some, including council member Valerie Ervin (D-District 5). Soon after the storm subsided, she requested a council hearing on why the county’s volunteer center wasn’t dispatched to help shovel sidewalks. (more…)

Photo: Thanks for not shoveling the sidewalk, asshole. Credit: J. Deseo/SSP.

The snow dumped by this weekend’s gangbuster storm is off the main roadways, though residential streets could use a touch-up, the county’s transportation department reported Tuesday.

The area’s emergency routes, bus routes, and main roadways were passable after Saturday’s storm unleashed 21 inches of powder in Silver Spring, the transportation department announced in a press release. By Monday night, Colesville Road, Georgia Avenue and East-West Highway in downtown Silver Spring were back in business, though rush-hour traffic was lighter than usual.

However, residential streets were still in need of a snow plow’s scrape despite an initial visit. The transportation department’s goal was “to make every residential street passable — not to necessarily clear them to bare pavement,” the press statement read. The department will continue to plow and spread “abrasives” onto those streets until conditions improve, it added. (more…)