They want to curb your dog.

The New York City Council on Thursday introduced a package of bills aimed at ending the scourge of dog poop that intensified during weeks of feces-strewn snow piles this winter.

The four bills, which will have hearings in the coming weeks, focused on both outreach and other ways to make it easier for dog owners to pick up after their four-legged friends.

Speaker Julie Menin reintroduced a bill she first proposed in 2024 that would require the sanitation department to regularly fill dog waste bag dispensers on or next to every public litter basket on city streets. 

“We know that dog waste is an enormous issue,” the speaker said before the bills were introduced. 

A spokesperson for the sanitation department, Vincent Gragnani, said the agency has previously made it clear it doesn’t have the resources to stock the bag dispensers.

“We need a community partner to maintain these. We don’t have the resources to keep these stocked daily, and our intention was that a local community group or the local Council member would take on the responsibility of keeping the dispensers full,” he said in an email to THE CITY.

Another bill introduced by Councilmember Harvey Epstein (D-Manhattan) would create a pilot program to compost dog waste left at dog runs.

“I’m a big composter in this city, I really focused on making sure we understand that we have the opportunity to reduce waste and do waste diversion,” he told THE CITY.

He takes his mutt, Homer, to local dog runs and isn’t able to compost the poo — which he said is a waste. 

“There’s a real opportunity to do something about ensuring that we divert that from trash and make it into compost,” he said. 

A handful of New York City dog runs have composting for dog feces, but it’s not universal. And it can’t be disposed of in regular brown compost bins and must instead go into the trash, a sanitation department spokesperson said.

Councilmember Mercedes Narcisse (D-Brooklyn) introduced a bill that would require signs posted at parks reminding people it’s illegal to not pick up after your dog. 

And another bill, from Brooklyn Democratic Councilmember Shahana Hanif, would create an educational initiative making sure New Yorkers know “it’s their duty” to pick up waste, she said. 

“It’s very important to understand that, as a dog guardian, if I leave the poop, I’m adding to the dangers and risks of a public health issue,” Hanif said.

She and other Council members spoke out on social media during winter storms when human owners didn’t pick up after their pets.

It’s illegal to not clean up after your dog. The city’s “Pooper Scooper” law was enacted in 1978, thanks in part to the advocacy of Fran Lee, a New Yorker who had become obsessed with the public health issue of dog waste. 

If caught, the fines are up to $250.

But it’s nearly impossible to ever catch anyone in the act, the city’s former acting sanitation commissioner admitted during budget testimony this year. 

“The chances of someone not picking up after their dog while an enforcement officer is watching is very, very slim,” Javier Lojan said, adding that they even set up stings to catch people in areas with a lot of complaints — and came up short.

They issued just two summonses for failure to remove canine waste last year, despite many complaints citywide.

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Within the first minute of SNL’s viral spoof of the Barbie movie’s song “I’m Just Ken,” a bleached and toned Pete Davidson softly croons about his purchase of a 277-foot Staten Island Ferry: “When I’m high, I do things like call up Colin Jost and say, ‘Homey, we should buy a boat.’”

It is one of the many references the comedians have made to their acquisition of the former John F. Kennedy Staten Island Ferry vessel for $280,100 in 2022 — a non-operational, 61-year-old ship they planned to transform into an event space with restaurants, bars, hotel rooms and a concert venue.

But since then, the massive ferry has become an embarrassing white elephant, moored to a pier they rent out at Staten Island’s Caddell Dry Dock and Repair. Meanwhile, Jost and Davidson have been sued for failure to pay a law firm involved in the ferry’s dockage and towing contracts.”

“Help our family,” joked Scarlett Johansson, Jost’s wife, about starting a GoFundMe when asked about his purchase last year. 

Now, they have an option to offload their slowly sinking ship: the state wants to send it to a watery grave — as a home for sea life that could make it the first large vessel in New York to be reborn underwater as an artificial reef.

The state official in charge of creating habitats for underwater creatures told THE CITY in no uncertain terms: He wants the ferry.

Marine biologist and diver Chris LaPorta has spent the last 26 years working as the sole coordinator for the state Department of Conservation’s artificial reef program, where he spends much of his time chasing leads on vessels that would make good reefs.

And he’s got his eyes on the John F. Kennedy.

Unlike other states that sink boats to create habitat, New York has yet to land a large vessel for reefing. States like New Jersey and Maryland have sunken retired naval crafts, which LaPorta called the “jewel in the crown” of artificial reefs.

“Something like a Staten Island Ferry would be approaching a naval vessel,” he said.

“They are gorgeous. They would make fine habitat, for sure,” he added. “Think about the iconic look on the bottom for divers because you’ve got that beautiful blazing orange and the navy blue. It would be something.”

Should New York obtain a large vessel of its own to sink, LaPorta would deposit it in one of the designated reef zones that create complex habitats which otherwise do not exist on the flat, sandy bottoms of New York waters.

LaPorta took a tour of the John F. Kennedy when it went up for auction.

Bill Cadden wanted it, too. He is a retired marine engineer who founded the nonprofit Long Island Reef Society to create artificial reefs out of concrete, rock or steel objects. He is often in touch with LaPorta at the DEC, and both men tap into their decades in the marine industry to source for reefing.

“I knew that the Kennedy was going to be coming out of service because they were building three new boats down in Florida,” Cadden said. “When the new boats started rolling in, the Kennedy, being the last of her class, was going to be on the chopping block.” 

But they lost out to the pair of entertainers in the public auction.

“That’s where Mr. Davidson and company came into the picture,” Cadden said. “They had the winning bid.” 

Sea Creatures and Seafarers 

Two groups benefit from artificial reefs: underwater species and humans who take an interest in them. 

The Kennedy’s large size, with the capacity to hold 3,500 passengers, would allow for currents and tides to flow through it, providing places for fish to swim in and hide from predators, Cadden explained. Its steel structure also means it has staying power to stick around for a long time.

Carl Lobue, senior marine scientist at The Nature Conservancy in New York who also does work on local artificial reefs, said the areas around man-made habitats are lively.

“We’ve taken some underwater videos of these areas, and they’re really full of different critters,“ he said. “It’s quite a diverse amount of marine life, from the little anemones that live on the structures, to the little crabs, shrimp and all of the fish.”

Artificial reefs also boost the “economic engine” that fishing is in the New York and New Jersey area by creating new spots for fishermen to find game, according to Lobue. 

“I think it would become a destination for people and marine life,” he said about the Kennedy. 

Most of New York’s ocean bottom is a marine life “desert,” without rock reefs and structures for certain species to cling to. According to Cadden, “The only place where there’s structure for marine life, for fish and other critters, is from vessels that have been sunk or material that has been put down for that purpose

Buyer’s Remorse 

For many, an impulse purchase entails a late-night fast food order, but for the two Staten Islanders who struck big performing on SNL, it was a 2,100-ton steel vessel.

Now, the pair apparently has buyer’s remorse, shown through self-deprecating humor. (Neither Jost nor Davidson’s representatives responded to THE CITY’s inquiries about their future plans for the ferry.)

“This is why idiots should not be allowed to do things,” Jost said on Late Night with Seth Meyers less than a year after the purchase.

“In case you’re wondering why I had to do a show in Saudi Arabia, we’re losing millions on this ferry,” Davidson said on SNL five months ago, referencing his much-criticized performance at the Riyadh Comedy Festival.

“You watch SNL every so often, he’ll be joking, ‘Here, take my boat,’” Cadden told THE CITY about Jost.

In fact, the japes about their “mistake” have become so common, Lobue at the Nature Conservancy has started collecting them.

“Every time it gets mentioned on Saturday Night Live as a little side joke, I’m constantly clipping the videos and sending them to the artificial reef unit at DEC,” he said.

Jost and Davidson are far from the first people to purchase a vessel with a dream but without any seafaring expertise. There have been a series of unsuccessful endeavors to repurpose old ferries in New York — like the Prudence Ferry purchased over a decade ago by the Long Island City-based company Plaxall with the idea of turning it into a floating beer garden. Cadden will now sink that ship for a reef in June, as previously reported by THE CITY. 

“Every single vessel was bought with a fantastic idea of reuse, but bought by someone who is not in the marine business,” Cadden said. “Sounds good on paper, but putting it into practice is going to be very, very expensive.”

Cadden estimated the cost of Jost and Davidson’s not-yet-realized plans.

“You could probably add two zeros to the number that they paid,” he told THE CITY, “then maybe double it, between what it’s going to cost them to upgrade and make the vessel compliant, and find a place to berth it.”

LaPorta underscored the easiest way to stop the cash flow: let the boat flood.

“I always have my eyes out, and if there’s any opportunity, I certainly will be in communication with them,” he said. 

Even selling it for scrap metal wouldn’t be a great option, Cadden said; the costs of transporting and cutting it up would likely outweigh the value of the material.

Lobue, for his part, said he recognizes Jost and Davidson’s vision for the Kennedy and what it symbolizes for the borough they hail from. 

But ultimately, he thinks they may be falling victim to a literal sunk-cost fallacy: not wanting to give up on something you’ve already put time and money into.

As a scientist, Lobue put it in entomological terms, likening them to a type of wasp that must dig a hole down to the water line to lay eggs.

“At some point in time, the wasp will realize, ‘I started digging in the wrong spot,’” he said. But the wasp won’t change course and “will invariably dig one hole.”

“They will never give up, and if they don’t reach water, they’ll just die digging. I do think that it’s human nature to do something like that, as well.”

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On a breezy Monday morning on a quiet corner of Queens, 11 leafy new neighbors arrived on a truck, fresh from a nursery in Kansas City.

Elm, red maple and cherry trees — some with pink blossoms — would be planted next to the sidewalks across a few blocks of Cambria Heights, a suburban-style neighborhood of homes with grassy front lawns. 

As workers hoisted a tree out of a bag surrounding its roots, a woman with a phone to her ear leaving a nearby house called out to ask what kind of tree the workers were planting: an elm that would grow to be up to 70 feet tall over the next three to four decades.

“Adding to the family!” she exclaimed, grinning, before getting into a car.

Cambria Heights is among the neighborhoods with the highest risks of extreme heat, where temperatures are hotter than the city’s average and where some blocks lack any trees. 

Monday’s tree-planting session came as part of a strategy in its second year that prioritizes putting new trees in the neighborhoods most vulnerable to extreme heat, rather than in response to ad hoc 311 requests, as had been done in years past. 

And planting those trees took on a particular significance as the Mamdani administration on Tuesday released a plan to expand the tree canopy to cover 30% of the city by 2040.

“To reach this 30% goal, it’s going to take work from every actor in the entire city,” said Jessica Einhorn, chief of forestry programs at the Department of Parks and Recreation. “This program planting trees, especially in the high [heat vulnerable] neighborhoods, is really critical towards that equity angle.”

In those riskier areas, the tree canopy — or the area of the city currently covered by trees and their leaves — currently stands at 19%, compared to about 26% in others, city Chief Climate Officer Louise Yeung told the City Council in March. (Overall, tree canopy covers just over 23% of the boroughs according to the last count in 2021. That was after a net increase of 1.2% since 2017.)

Trees across the city serve more than an aesthetic purpose — they add to the health and resiliency of a neighborhood. Areas with a robust tree canopy and vegetation have shown to be slightly to significantly cooler compared to places where green space is scarce and pavement is plentiful. Trees also help to purify air and can reduce water runoff to mitigate flooding. 

And their value as heat-regulators will only increase in the near future.

By the 2040s — the due date for the 30% canopy goal — New York City’s temperatures could be between nearly 3 and 6 degrees hotter due to the effects of climate change, according to the New York City Panel on Climate Change. Heat is dangerous: it contributes to the deaths of over 500 New Yorkers on average each year, with Black New Yorkers twice as likely to die compared to whites.

The city already experiences the urban heat island effect, meaning it’s hotter because of the density, pavement and tall buildings than elsewhere. But some areas are significantly greener and cooler than others, while other neighborhoods are more vulnerable to heat based on a combination of physical factors — like existing trees — and social considerations, like residents’ income and access to air conditioning.

The Parks Department’s tree-planting strategy, announced in 2024, does away with the system where anyone can call 311 to ask for a new tree — except for the loophole New Yorkers can make a $1,800 donation to do so, as previously reported by THE CITY.

The new system instead divides the city into more than 400 zones, planting trees in every viable place within a zone while removing stumps and dying trees. 

Each community board district will have a zone serviced every three years, and Parks plans to hit all zones every nine years. (Here’s a tentative schedule of tree-planting locations.) The most heat-vulnerable neighborhoods are on track to be completed by the end of 2027, Yeung said.

Money Grows Trees

Mamdani’s plan is the first time the city has set a target date for the goal of a 30% canopy. But critically, the money to pay for it has not been committed.

“Many of the actions in the plan rely on existing program budgets and aim to ensure that we are spending smarter,” City Hall spokesperson Jessica Woolford said in a statement. “We are creatively leveraging funds from government and private sources to advance our shared goals.”

City Hall did not offer its own estimate for the cost. But according to a 2022 estimate from a local environmental advocacy group, it would cost about $500 million to plant a million trees and achieve its canopy goal.

“The plan is great, but what comes after is the most critical part,” said Shravanthi Kanekal, a resiliency planner at the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance. “It’s going to signal a whole lot to see how much they dedicate funding to the plan.”

Though as a candidate, Mamdani promised to dedicate 1% of the budget to the Department of Parks and Recreation, his preliminary budget this year proposed spending just half of that — cutting nearly $34 million from the department’s budget in the current fiscal year.

“I’m really glad to see the city set a goal of 2040, and I think what we’ve been looking to is how to further accelerate achieving that goal,” said Tami Lin-Moges, director of the cities program at the Nature Conservancy. “But obviously that really relies on increased investments. … Investing in parks and the urban forest is an investment in livability in New York City.”

Greening the city so almost a third of it has tree canopy will require money, manpower and shoring up interest from New Yorkers, said Simon Skinner, chief of programs and operations at the New York Restoration Project.

He pointed to the successful initiative to plant a million trees that the Bloomberg administration launched in 2007. It took eight years, short of the decade expected. 

“It shows it’s possible,” Skinner said. “Everyone was pulling in the same direction because it was such a big initiative coming from City Hall.”

Skinner said several agencies coordinated to prioritize the goal as private landowners got involved, and the government and its partners educated kids and adults on tree planting and stewardship. 

In Cambria Heights on Monday, interactions with neighbors showed some of the challenges the city may face as it reaches for the goal; not everyone was happy about the newly rooted neighbors.

Derrick Simmons, a long-time resident of a nearby block, stopped by to talk to the Parks workers about the problems he’s had with trees.

“The trees have fallen on different people’s cars. They broke up the sidewalks,” he said. “I know they said that this is supposed to make the neighborhood more beautiful, and I get that. But of course we got 26 trees. We don’t need any more trees.”

A bit later, another neighbor walked by and said the tree roots were messing with his home’s sewer pipes: “I live on the next block. We got tree-lined streets. It sucks!” 

Navé Strauss, Parks’ director of tree planting, said, “Our mandate is to plant every available location.”

Einhorn said Simmons and his neighbor’s complaints indicated there was a lot that could be done to “increase the connection between people and their trees.” 

“We do as much as we can to care for the trees, but really it’s those blocks where like a property owner or a neighbor will come out and water the tree or maybe plant flowers around that the data shows that those trees are better off than the others,” she said. 

To reach the 30% canopy goal, trees will need to be planted on privately owned property, not just in public parks and on streets, Einhorn said — “and more than anything else is preserving our existing tree canopy.”

That maintenance — pruning, watering, cleaning tree beds and removing invasive vines — is important for trees to thrive and for the canopy to expand. All of those tasks require people to do them, which costs money.

“Obviously it’s sexy and nice to plant a bunch of new trees, but we have to also look after what we already have,” Skinner said. “They have an outsized effect on things like reducing heat and absorbing pollution.”

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As cherry blossoms bloom in the beginning of April, the idyllic promenades of Roosevelt Island transform into catwalks. Visitors travel to the tiny island to capture the fleeting beauty of the flowering trees overlooking the Manhattan skyline — and their own portraits, for Instagram. 

Crowds wearing their best outfits flash wide smiles under the pink and white blooms there to view and be seen with the more than 100 cherry blossom trees that bring a brief flurry of activity to the typically quiet island. But amidst the fervor for the best pictures, some visitors turn the trees into props. 

“They like to snap the flower off the tree, or I’ve actually seen someone take a branch off,” said Jennifer Engstler, who has lived on the island for 23 years. “I’ve seen people crawl on the trees like kids, or they hang from them. It just — it drives me crazy.” 

Engstler is the island’s resident behind the initiative to safeguard the trees, where volunteers in neon pink vests and sunglasses patrol the rows of cherries to intercept people shaking, pulling down or snapping the branches to bring down the blooms.

She raised the idea for the blossom protector crew during a community meeting last year, feeling that signs asking people to respect the cherry trees were not enough to enforce good behavior.

“You can put all the signs up in the world that you want,” Engstler said. “I think a majority of the people are respectful, but you only need a few people to ruin a tree.” 

When people shake and pull at branches, they could break off limbs, weaken the tree or speed up the flowers’ expiration date. Touching and rattling them leaves fewer petals for others to enjoy. Instead, visitors should let the brief springtime blooms happen untouched, and the petals fall on their own, experts say.

The Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation, the quasi-state agency that manages the island, took Engstler’s idea and launched the Petals Protector Initiative, bringing it back for this spring season after it received positive feedback from residents, said RIOC assistant vice president of communications and government affairs Bryant Daniels. 

“On Roosevelt Island, people are very invested in their neighborhood and doing their part to keep the island special,” he said. “We want to make sure we are protecting the cherry blossoms for future generations.” 

The Island’s ‘Living Treasures’ 

Volunteers in their bright uniforms stroll for two-hour shifts, handing out “protect the cherry blossom” fliers that include a map of the island’s trees and a QR code to its local businesses. As a thank you, they can keep their reflective pink shades when done. 

According to Daniels, 26 people have signed up to protect the cherry blossoms this year. 

Petal Protector Romeo Cayanan, 67, who has lived on the island for 10 years, said the cherry blossoms were its “living treasures.” 

The brief time the trees bloom motivated him to do what he can to preserve them. “It’s only like for two weeks, so we have to enjoy them,” Cayanan said, “and it’s free!”

Another volunteer, Kavita Rani, 31, had never seen cherry blossoms before this season. She moved to the United States from India nearly three years ago, but as a new Roosevelt Island resident, this is her first time living where cherry blossoms bloom.

“It was so dead,” she said, “and suddenly it’s so beautiful.” 

The Petal Protectors THE CITY spoke with said most of the island’s visitors behaved around the blossoms and listened when asked to look, but not touch, the flowering trees. 

“I realized that people really get excited when they see such a beautiful plant,” Rani said. “Sometimes, in their excitement, they would touch the blossoms.” 

But when Rani would politely ask transgressors to stop, she said, “I didn’t expect that it would be so easy.” 

To her surprise, she told THE CITY, “people were really receptive.” 

Zell, an Astoria resident, used a tripod to take pictures and videos of himself beneath the trees on a recent weekday, donning a kimono the same shade as the petals swaying over his head.

“I just really like cherry blossoms,” he said, having lived in Guam, where he made frequent trips to Japan, another famous cherry blossom hotspot. “I grew up with a fondness for them.”

The Protector Pledge

Although trees are blooming throughout the five boroughs, Roosevelt Island is the only area in New York City with people trained to safeguard the blossoms. Elsewhere in the country, however, those efforts have budded. 

Volunteers sign up to preserve the cherry trees exist in New Jersey and on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

“We have found that educating visitors in best practices for taking care of the cherry trees is the best way to ensure their longtime health,” said Mike Litterst, chief of communications for the National Mall and Memorial Parks. 

The campaign includes encouraging people, especially children, to take the cherry blossom protector pledge: 

“I will protect the trees

For they cannot speak

I will take pictures

Not blossoms

So they may remain

For you and me

And for the future”

“Kids especially get into it,” Litterst said. “A lot of them take it to heart like they’ve been deputized. They yell at adults who are picking at the blossoms and dragging at the tree branches.”

A Boom in Visitors for the Blossoms

The Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation hopes visitors explore beyond the cherry blossoms when they come to the island.

“Roosevelt Island has great public space, and right now the cherry blossoms are the stars,” said B.J. Jones, Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation’s CEO. “But there’s so much that the island offers,” he said, including a memorial to the reporter Nellie Bly — namesake of THE CITY’s own beloved pigeon, by the way. 

As the Corporation encourages tourism, residents like Engstler are forced to grapple with the influx of visitors on the serene island she calls home. 

“Our island has become a lot more popular,” she said. “It’s beautiful. I understand why people want to come here.”

The slice of land between Queens and Manhattan has been overwhelmed in the past by flocks of people travelling to appreciate its blossoms.  

But as long as the cherry blossoms bloom, visitors are bound to flock.  

“This is our first time coming here,” said Jackson Heights resident May Cabonong, beaming as her friend snapped pictures of her under the trees — keeping an appropriate distance from the petals themselves.

 “We heard from our friends that this area is the most beautiful.”

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Springtime in New York City is always magical — but perhaps more now than ever after the coldest, sludgiest winter in years.

April showers are rejuvenating eager buds while the warmer weather invites them to open up. Blooming cherry blossoms and magnolias inspire awe and wonder as passersby stop to take in the ephemeral moment. 

“They’re the first trees to bloom in spring, and they really tell us that spring has arrived,” said James Kaechele, the manager of the Parks Department’s Tree Time program and a certified master arborist.

The five boroughs are home to at least 47 varieties of cherry and cherry-esque blossoms, 15 varieties of magnolias and 26 varieties of crabapples — accounting for more than 68,000 of these flowering spring trees across city parks and streets, according to Parks Department data. (Some of what people assume to be “cherry” blossoms aren’t actually cherries — but we’ll get into that later.)

The data only includes street and park trees managed by the Parks Department but does not include those in Central Park because they’re managed by the park’s conservancy. Still, the data shows that “cherry” blossoms by far dominate the city’s offerings of these flowering trees. 

Overall, a high concentration of cherry, magnolia and crabapple trees live in city parks, including popular sighting destinations like Prospect Park, but also underrated hotspots like Flushing Meadows Corona Park, Bronx Park and Van Cortlandt Park.

Outside of parks, these trees are most populous in more remote parts of the city: in the southern tip of Staten Island and in parts of eastern Queens bordering Long Island. 

Explore the map below to see hotspots for these trees across the five boroughs:

First Things First: Not All Blossoms Are Cherries!

Some of what people commonly know as cherry blossoms are not technically cherry trees at all. They are instead part of the genus “prunus,” which includes stone fruit trees like plums and apricots with buds that can bloom to look like cherry flowers in spring.

The third-most common kind of these blossoms in New York City streets and parks, according to Parks data — the Prunus cerasifera, or cherry plum — is, in fact, a plum tree and not a cherry.

“Sometimes since there are several different flowering trees in that family, the blossoms can look similar,” said K Satterthwaite, the lead arborist and tree care manager for the Central Park Conservancy. 

“There are a lot of ways to distinguish them, but the flowers can look similar, even though ornamental cherries really have characteristic longer blooms and have been bred for their ornamental characteristics.”

A good way to differentiate the different stone fruit trees is through the color and length of the leaves, Satterthwaite said. Many plums, for instance, have purple leaves, while peaches have longer leaves than ornamental cherries. 

Also Important: Be Good to the Trees 

And please, do not shake the trees! 

“It’s very tempting for your Instagram video, but it literally speeds up the decline of the blooms,” Satterthwaite said. 

Instead, let nature run its course, and the petals fall on their own. When they do, Kaechele said there is still beauty to enjoy. 

“Particularly at the end of the cherry season and in late April, after the Kwanzan cherries bloom, you end up with this pink carpet on the ground,” he said. “It’s a beautiful reflection over time of what was up in the tree is now on the ground, but it’s still this pink puddle. It’s so beautiful.” 

When Do Different Varieties Bloom?

Blossoms are the most abundant in April because of the sheer variety of “cherries,” magnolias and crabapples planted across the city. Even as one variety begins to fall, others begin to bloom. 

“It’s the gentle time of year,” said Rowan Blaik, namesake of the Rowan tree and the head of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s living and non-living collections. 

Unlike summertime, when flora suffers heat stress and pest infestations, during April “everything’s kind of lush and just perfect as flowers open up,” Blaik said. “It’s the perfect time to come and see.”

Okame cherries — flashy and bright pink — are blooming right now, according to Kaechele. Yoshino cherries — white with pale pink — are the next to flourish, followed by Kwanzan Cherries and “many varieties in between” as the month progresses.

“So don’t worry, you didn’t miss it,” Kaechele said. 

At Central Park, Satterthwaite has been keeping close watch as part of a team that updates the Cherry Blossom Tracker while buds grow throughout the day and then explode into color. 

“In the morning it was like, ‘Oh, are they ready? Are they going to do it?’” they said. “The flower buds will get really big, and you’ll start to see a sliver of color. Then, in the afternoon, they were open.” 

According to Satterthwaite, Yoshino cherries began blooming last week, following the Okame cherries that kicked off the bright season. 

The forecasted weather also predicts warm days and cool nights — gentle temperatures that, according to Kaechele, are perfect for the petals to stay on the branches. 

Springtime weather has become inconsistent in recent decades however, experts told THE CITY, and blossoms have been arriving sooner than they used to in the past few years. 

“While it’s really hard to look at a few years and make direct correlations, in general, we have been trending earlier in terms of blooming and basically springtime as we’ve seen average temperatures increase,” Satterthwaite said.

“Spring is less dependably on the same date,” Kaechele added. “Less dependable makes it harder for everybody to do their job when they’re caring for trees.”

Some years, warm spells in February have caused trees to come out of dormancy early, he said, while frigid temperatures and heavy snowfall this winter meant trees stayed inactive for longer to survive.

How Does the City Decide What to Plant and Where?

These spring blossoms are just a few of the 140 varieties of trees the Parks Department plants each year, according to Kaechele. Nurseries across the country, from Long Island and Western New York to Maryland and Missouri, grow trees specifically for the city’s parks. 

Parks foresters consider a variety of factors when planting trees, like what trees can survive a tough urban landscape, and the benefits each brings in terms of shade, cleaner air and capturing storm water.

But other measures are harder to quantify, Kaechele said. “Sometimes just straight-up beauty plays into this.”

The soothing effects of nature on a person’s nervous system are “just as important as these very measurable ecosystem services,” said Kaechele. 

“We wouldn’t ask if you want a fire hydrant on your block. We do it because we know that we need it. It’s the same with trees.”

At Central Park, arborists consider how the trees suit the park’s history.

Places like Cherry Hill — home to Yoshino cherries gifted by Japan in 1912 — are “going to remain a place where cherries are featured,” Satterthwaite said. Paths along the Reservoir and the Conservatory Water Pond have also historically featured cherry blossoms. 

“Cherries will always be an important part of those landscapes,” Satterthwaite told THE CITY. “It’s a very curated experience.”

Where Tree Experts Go to See the Blooms

Brooklyn Botanic Garden, a popular hub for cherry blossom revellers, boasts over 180 flowering cherry trees from more than 30 species and cultivars. The garden also has over 50 species and cultivars of Magnolia throughout its 52 acres, including yellow-flowering magnolias it bred in the 20th century, according to Blaik.

“We’ve got a lot of diversity in our cherry collection, from very kind of simple, plain looking flowers that are closer to the wild forms, then we’ve got the big, pom-pom like flowers of the Kanzan cherries,” also known as “Kwanzan” cherries, Blaik said. 

“There’s something to love for all of them really,” he said. “It’s a magic time of year.”

Kaechele, for his part, loves watching the Yoshino Cherries bloom at Hunters Point South Park in Long Island City, Queens. “There’s something really spectacular about this ring of beautiful white Yoshino cherries and fantastic Manhattan skyline,” he said. “It just has such a clear sense of place.”

He also recommends Flushing Meadow Park in Corona, Queens, around the iconic Unisphere, and Sakura Park and Riverside Park in Upper Manhattan, which encompasses Cherry Walk, a path lined with cherry trees along the Hudson River.  

In Central Park, in addition to Cherry Hill and the Reservoir, Satterthwaite said the Conservancy Water Pond next to the Alice in Wonderland statue will be a “hot spot for cherries for the next several weeks.” 

“That’s one of my personal favorites,” she said. “It’s so beautiful outside, and everyone’s just happy.” 

Don’t fret, however, if you miss the blooms this spring:  “No matter what, spring happens every year,” Satterthwaite said.  

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Peering at New York City’s landscape more than 400 years in the past — when the marshes, ponds and streams crisscrossed our string of islands — can help planners and policymakers better understand the city’s flooding future.

Researchers at the New York Botanical Garden looked at where water used to be, where there’s water now and where — thanks to climate change — water will be in the coming years. Those places are called Blue Zones.

The five boroughs contain more than 500 of them, according to a new paper published Wednesday in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, the first comprehensive analysis of its kind. The Blue Zones cover more than one-fifth of New York’s land.

“Everybody was startled, including us, that it’s more than 20% of the city,” said Eric Sanderson, vice president of urban conservation at the New York Botanical Garden and an author of the paper. “That combination, you can’t really argue with it — places that were wet, are wet and will be wet in the future.”

Lucinda Royte, lead author of the paper and manager of urban conservation, data tools and outreach at the New York Botanical Garden, said the Blue Zones indicate where it’s most pressing to address flood risks and increase resiliency. 

“It can be a pretty good guide about where we’ll see flooding in the future as a result of coastal flooding from storm surge and sea level rise, and inland flooding from rainfall events,” Royte said. “It can help us plan a little bit better about where we need to make some infrastructural changes in the city before a flooding crisis happens.”

About 1.2 million people (about 12% of the city’s population) and 11% of buildings are in Blue Zones. With the report, the Botanical Garden launched a digital tool that shows block-by-block information about historical ecology, current flood vulnerability and future flood risks.

Both LaGuardia Airport and JFK Airport are located in Blue Zones, on former salt marshes and marine ecosystems that were filled in. About a third of public housing developments, home to some of the poorest New Yorkers, are in Blue Zones, too.

Royte herself lives in a Blue Zone: Gowanus, Brooklyn, which was historically a salt marsh with Gowanus Creek flowing through. The concept of Blue Zones hit home for her when Hurricane Ida brought floodwaters to her neighborhood.

“My entire block was underwater,” she said. “I saw ponds and streams and wetlands return.”

Notably, the paper notes that some of the Blue Zones will become uninhabitable in the future, which points to the urgent need to build more housing, transit and other services elsewhere in the city — a conclusion other studies have made.

‘Water Doesn’t Care’

Blue Zones raise a red flag about the scale of the flood problem New York City faces, and will face, thanks to climate change, which promises to bring higher seas, more intense storms and more rainfall in the coming years. 

“It shows how large scale this is and it lets you look at the city as a landscape,” Royte said. “We currently view the city through its political boundaries. We care about neighborhoods and zip codes, but water doesn’t care about those boundaries.”

Of the Blue Zones, nearly two-thirds of the land area is at risk of coastal flooding from storm surge and sea level rise. About 5% of the Blue Zone land is at risk of flooding from rainfall, and 36% could see both coastal and rainfall flooding.

Much of the land in the Blue Zones is public, with government entities owning about two-thirds and the Department of Parks and Recreation specifically overseeing half of that.

“It’s so obvious that investing in parks will save lives and livelihoods,” said Amy Chester, director of Rebuild By Design, who reviewed the Blue Zones paper. Her organization last year released an analysis showing a majority of city parks will be at risk of flooding.

The Parks Department — whose proposed budget falls short of what Mayor Zohran Mamdani had promised — acknowledged its role in flood management.

“By working together and integrating the latest data and best practices into our planning process, we can create a stronger, more equitable park system that protects both people and nature for generations to come,” Parks spokesperson Judd Faulkner said in a statement.

In a statement, DEP spokesperson Doug Auer called the Blue Zones analysis “a useful tool in our collaborative stormwater planning efforts,” and pointed to work the agency is doing with other agencies to “identify where public lands can serve double duty for stormwater management and help restore natural urban drainage corridors.”

Many of the initiatives to make neighborhoods more resilient to flooding — including permanently moving people away from risks, adding storm drains and building rain gardens — are in the works, prompted by disastrous flooding after 2012’s Hurricane Sandy and 2021’s Hurricane Ida.

“We found, coincidentally, when you look at places that flooded during Hurricane Sandy or Hurricane Ida, they line up pretty closely with historical hydrology,” Royte said.

The storm surge of Sandy flooded areas that had been beaches and tidal marshes, while Ida’s deluge flooded places that had been ancient ponds, wetlands and streams. 

Residents of Hollis, Queens, dealt with devastating flooding during Ida as well as during many other rainstorms, and learned their lowlying neighborhood was built atop a former pond.

The Hole, a neighborhood on the border of Queens and Brooklyn that sits below sea level, has continuously taken on water that can remain days after it rains. The city is now offering possible buyouts to residents there.

In The Bronx, the city is also working to unearth Tibbetts Brook in order to bring the subterranean waterway above ground, as it was over a century ago. That way, the brook can once again channel water, preventing it from hitting the sewer system and surrounding areas.

But Sanderson said more must be done: “I don’t think there’s any choice but to scale up. The climate is going to force our hand, and we’re already seeing that,” he said.

“You can use planning and ecosystems to help return some of that water to the sky and some to the ground and not assume all has to go through the wastewater treatment plants.”

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City sanitation workers battling massive snow and ice piles left by last week’s storm have kept up with trash collection — but have fallen a day behind on recyclables.

“Given that the same sanitation workers who pick up trash have been clearing the foot of snow and ice that fell last Sunday, we are about one day behind on collection, and we ask for patience from New Yorkers while we catch up,” Department of Sanitation spokesman Josh Goodman told THE CITY. 

“We are prioritizing trash and compost — the stuff that can smell — over recyclables, but we are picking up all streams, all across the city, just on a slight delay,” he added.

The Department of Sanitation is running hundreds of trucks through extended 12-hour shifts until they’re caught up, Goodman said.

The department is also running 193 basket trucks to collect from the approximately 23,000 litter baskets across the five boroughs. The city is running them in two shifts, as opposed to a normal three, to clear them out, he added. 

The agency has also planned for garbage underneath the giant snow piles. The large snow melters seen across the city have filters to catch any loose trash, Goodman said. He also noted that commercial waste is collected through private carting companies, which could add to the trash-strewn streets. 

Mayor Zohran Mamdani praised the work of the city’s sanitation department at a frigid press conference at the top of the municipal building on Monday. The agency is still being led by acting commissioner Javier Lojan, a holdover from Eric Adams’s administration.

Approximately 2,500 sanitation workers are putting in overtime in 12-hour shifts instead of the normal eight hours. The department also has 500 additional emergency workers doing the painstaking — and frigid — work of snow removal.

“I know that they are working with everything that they have to come up to speed, and that will continue to be a focus for us,” Mamdani said. “What we want is a city where New Yorkers can return back to their lives as they were. We know that this cold is not going to help us.”

Last Sunday’s snowfall of around 10 inches and the sub-freezing temperatures in the days that followed have proven to be a logistical test for the new mayor in his first few weeks on the job. 

Mamdani updated the death toll of people found outside to 16 New Yorkers, saying 13 appear to be due to extreme cold, and three were likely overdoses.

Ten of the 16 people were on a “by name” list of persistent street homeless people who interact with outreach teams, a spokeswoman told THE CITY.

Mamdani said that none of the people who died appeared to be living in encampments. The mayor has been criticized for changing a policy of destroying encampments to encourage people to go into more permanent shelter.

The city has deployed 20 warming buses near hospitals, opened warming centers at 11 NYC public hospital health centers and boosted outreach on city streets.

On Sunday, his administration announced an “emergency expansion” of 50 single-room shelter rooms in upper Manhattan, which opened Monday. 

But there have been issues with getting the word out about the available options to the most vulnerable. A report Monday from Gothamist showed that despite a warming bus parked outside the Staten Island Ferry, nobody inside knew it was there. 

“I think we have to use every single option we have to get New Yorkers inside,” Mamdani said. 

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It was frigid on Thursday when the Shoofly  —  a 64-foot 1941 tugboat forged with American steel – set out along the Newtown Creek to carve up the ice sheets blocking barges from getting through.  

The ice parted soundlessly before the 78-ton vessel as it made its way past the Kosciuszko Bridge, which connects industrial stretches of Brooklyn and Queens, through a stretch of creek that isn’t as busy as its mouth near the East River. 

If not for the Shoofly’s efforts, barges carrying essential heating fuel for  thousands of homes in Brooklyn and Queens wouldn’t be able to get through. 

The U.S. Coast Guard’s three icebreaking tugs – Penobscot Bay, Sturgeon Bay and Hawser — are working 12-hour shifts focused on the Hudson River and the New York Harbor. The Hudson has to be kept clear for fuel deliveries upstate and is much quicker to freeze because it’s mostly fresh water, compared to the  East River’s saltwater. 

That’s left the Shoofly to embark on its first ice-breaking mission — at least since Captain N.D. Austin took the helm in 2017. 

“There aren’t that many boats in the harbor who can go out and break ice,” Austin said. “There aren’t a ton of icebreakers in New York.”

The Shoofly is not a traditional working tugboat. As part of the Tideland Institute, which was cofounded by a nonprofit that aims to make New York City’s waterways and coastline more accessible, it is more regularly involved in waterfront art projects — occasionally with this reporter as a volunteer shiphand — than with fuel deliveries.

But an icebreaker is really just any tugboat with a sturdy steel hull to break through frozen sheets that might damage a weaker vessel. The method is simple: Break the ice by ramming through it. 

So as the creek’s brackish water froze amid New York’s long run of freezing temperatures, the Shoofly took on a new mission, slowly but methodically, humming along at a speed of around 4 knots, or 5 miles an hour. 

Several times throughout the afternoon, the tugboat confronted large sheets of contiguous ice that halted it in its tracks. Even then, a simple reverse and pivot allowed the boat to take on a smaller slice.

For about two hours, the Shoofly chugged up and down the creek, carving off new hunks of ice with each swipe. As the sun set behind the industrial landscape, the blackish waters already glistened with a thin layer of fresh ice quickly beginning to refreeze in the boat’s wake.

As of Friday, it’s been seven consecutive days in New York City with the temperature continuously below freezing, according to the National Weather Service. 

The New York City Ferry, whose vessels are made of lightweight aluminum and designed for speed, has indefinitely suspended operations. 

Coast Guard icebreakers have had to dislodge an NYPD vessel on the Hudson River, and are helping trash and scrap metal barges coming and going from Red Hook, Petty Officer Logan Kaczmarek told THE CITY. 

The National Weather Service began tracking temperatures in 1871, and since then the longest stretch of consecutive subzero temperatures was 16 days in the winter of 1961. As Hell Gate recently noted, the East River froze repeatedly in the 19th century, even enabling citydwellers to cross between Brooklyn and Manhattan on foot. 

“As news spread that such a feat was possible, thousands left their business to gratify their love of adventure by a run across the newly constructed bridge,” the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported on January 23 of 1867.

New York Metro Weather meteorologist John Homenuk said there’s a chance we could break that record of 16 subzero days if Monday and Tuesday don’t crack freezing.

“The back half of next week looks really cold so that’ll be the test,” he said. 

That’s likely to mean regular icebreaking expeditions for the Shoofly in the days to come.

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William Galarza awoke to chills that felt like 10 degrees in Union Square Park Tuesday morning, his corner of the public space still cordoned off by the foot of snow that descended Sunday — the most New York City has seen in five years.

“I didn’t know the snow was coming that day, so I got stuck here,” Galaraza, 40, said. 

A blanket of snow swallowed his surroundings, and a single pair of footprints — Galarza’s own — marked the way to his camp. None of the city’s 400-plus homeless outreach specialists, he said, had come to visit so far during the cold spell. 

“Nobody even shoveled anything over here,” he added, pointing to a small clear patch in front of his fort, assembled with cardboards and folded tables and covered overhead with tarps held down by cinder blocks. 

“Look at all this snow, I was pushing all of this,” he said. “But someone took my shovel.”

Homeless outreach specialists have placed 170 unhoused New Yorkers into shelters and transitional housing since Jan. 19 as the agency began to prepare for record snowfall, Mayor Zohran Mamdani said in a briefing Monday. 

The Department of Homeless Services could not immediately provide an update to that figure Thursday, but spokesperson Neha Sharma said outreach workers have made 620 referrals to its facilities from Jan. 19 through Wednesday afternoon — a number that counts an individual for each night they’re placed into a shelter. Most of those referrals, Sharma added, involved people who’d previously resisted offers to move into shelters.

Those numbers account for a fraction of the more than 4,500 New Yorkers who live on the street, according to the city’s latest point-in-time estimate, tallied last winter.

Many, like Galarza, have remained unsheltered throughout the frigid stretch, sleeping between interruptions on street corners, above heat vents, inside parks, subway stations, fast food restaurants and bank vestibules. 

Some unsheltered New Yorkers who have remained outside told THE CITY this week that they do so by choice, preferring the freedoms of the streets to the curfews and restrictions of the shelter system. Others say they’ve simply fallen through the gaps.

The consequences of being unsheltered in the cold can be dire, however. Since Saturday, 10 New Yorkers have been found outside in the extreme weather and pronounced dead. Six of them, Mayor Zohran Mamdani said on Wednesday, were people known to the shelter system.

‘I Got No Home’

During “Enhanced Code Blue” events — a city designation for special protocols that take place during snowfalls and long stretches of below-freezing days — outreach workers pay special focus to the approximately 350 unsheltered individuals on their priority lists, with a goal of visiting them once every two hours from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. These lists broadly cover individuals who live with medical, mental health or substance use conditions, who are older, or who appear to be chronically underdressed.

Some agencies step in to help cover the rest of the city’s unhoused population during the weather emergency. Homeless assistance requests to 311, the city’s service line, for one, are rerouted through 911 to police officers and emergency medical technicians to speed up response times. Parks Department officers, too, canvass more than 100 parks where unhoused people gather, beginning patrols at around 6 a.m. through midnight, said Parks Enforcement Patrol Inspector Cynthia Thompson.

Mamdani on Tuesday also announced additional emergency outreach protocols on the heels of the 10 deaths, including requests to shelter providers and faith-based organizations to have staff “canvass nearby blocks and engage anyone who needs assistance” every few hours. City Hall spokesperson Sam Raskin told THE CITY Thursday that several of DHS’s usual partner agencies are also involved in carrying out the new measure, including the Parks Department, the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, the Emergency Management Department and the city’s public hospital system.

Since then, no deaths of people found outside in the extreme cold have been reported, a police spokesperson said Thursday evening, even as temperatures have remained frigid.

While Galarza said Tuesday that he had not been contacted by any of the city’s contracted outreach specialists during the cold spell, he noted that Parks Department officers had twice connected him with a room within the city’s shelter system over the summer.

“But they took me out of the place,” he said, referring to shelter staff. 

Galarza, who makes some income guarding chess players’ tables and pieces in Union Square, said he suspected it was because he had violated curfews while working. 

“I don’t know what’s the problem,” he said. “Why I’m outside on the streets, why the police be harassing me everywhere I go.”

He said he hasn’t thought much about returning to the shelter system since, mostly because of his new companion: Casi, a tabby cat who had found her way to Galarza from the Union Square Holiday Market. (Pets are generally not allowed in shelters, with some exceptions.)

Galarza said he wished outreach specialists would help find an accommodation for him and Casi.

“I just want to have a home. That’s why I come here to work,” said Galarza, stationed not far away from the park’s chess players. “But I got no home.” 

‘Nothing You Could Really Do’

Several feet underneath the park, a man who asked to be identified as John Lancaster sat along a staircase ledge inside the Union Square subway station. Lancaster, 32, said he had just returned to the city from working a 13-hour shift at a warehouse in New Jersey.

He became homeless shortly after his mother died two years ago, he said, and has been working a seasonal job at the warehouse since October. He had been staying with friends at the time, though that changed two months later.

“People — when they know you need them, they become predators, so I had to leave,” said Lancaster.

One of DHS’s drop-in centers had connected him to a Brooklyn hotel shelter then, he said, where he was granted an exception to the curfew because of his night shifts at the warehouse. But by the time he returned from work in the daytime, shelter staff had already given his bed away to someone else.

He tried walking into shelters on a freezing day two weeks ago too, with hopes of making use of the open-door policy during Code Blue events, which circumvent normal intake procedures while they’re in effect from 4 p.m. to 8 a.m. the next morning.

“But they tell me it’s only at night,” he said. “And I work at night.”

Sharma, however, said the open-door policy extends to the daytime during “Enhanced Code Blue” events, when freezing conditions stretch for days at a time, as has been the case since Jan. 23.

Other times, Lancaster said, he’s sent on a runaround from one shelter to another.

“They say the same thing. They’ll say, ‘We don’t have room,” and then they’ll say, ‘Go talk to that shelter too.’ And then you talk to that shelter and they tell you to talk to that other shelter,” Lancaster recalled. “There’s nothing you could really do.”

In the meantime, he’s been sleeping on bus rides provided by his company to and from his job — two hours on the way there, and two hours on the way back. The rest of the time, he said, he tends to stay underground, bouncing from one subway station to another to keep warm.

“Right now, it’s survive or die,” Lancaster said. “And I’m just not the type to sit and die.”

‘Puzzles and Survival’

Jojo was rolling up a cigarette in a corner of the main hall of Grand Central station as noon approached on Tuesday. The 54-year-old, who asked only to be identified by his nickname, said he’d spent the night earlier sleeping in a vestibule.

He doesn’t carry around blankets, and said he tends to sleep in just his clothes — a black puffer and several sweaters underneath — at night.

“I basically wander around ‘til I’m tired, and I fall asleep,” he said. “And then I do this,” he continued, gesturing to how he’d tuck his hands into his puffer sleeves at night.

Jojo said he prefers to sleep on the streets because of the surveillance at shelters.

“I was in prison for 10 years, and the shelter system gets very complicated with the police — and it should, because it’s got so many people and they want to get into each other’s things,” he said. “But I can’t be around any police.” 

Some of his personal belongings, he added, are also prohibited in shelters. 

He pulled out a small round case from his puffer pocket, unfolding a nail clipper that he keeps in it along with pendants collected from the ground. One resembles a heart, another a ribbon, a third a skull with wings, and the last the Ankh — the ancient Egyptian symbol of life, sometimes used as a protective amulet in everyday life.

Jojo pointed to the nail file attached to the clipper. “This is considered a knife, and they break it off,” he said. “But I use it to clean my nails.”

His clipper is an especially essential part of his personal hygiene routine, he continued, recalling a time when he’d avoided a job interview because of his nails.

“I cleaned up to go to a business interview that was put together, but my nails weren’t good enough for me to go see these people,” he said. “And I didn’t go anywhere because my nails were a mess.”

These days, Jojo mostly spends his days in Midtown Manhattan — charging his phone on a LinkNYC tower while playing his favorite video game on his phone: “Puzzles and Survival.”

He likes to stop at a church near Grand Central to sip on a hot cup of coffee, too, he said.

“It’s usually open, warm, but [Monday] it was closed. And the other places were closed, so I figured they were snowed in,” he added.

Jojo said he’d spent the rest of the Sunday at Grand Central and the Bryant Park subway station. But for the past six months, he said, he’s been thinking about leaving New York to get out of the cold for good. 

“I want to get to Nevada, get some ID, apply for services, and be in the shelter again,” Jojo said. “In Nevada, I can begin all again.”

‘The Devil You Know’

Outside the Columbus Circle subway station, Alex, 42, organized his shopping cart as he prepared to duck underground.

The former theater teacher said he became unhoused about three years ago, after his job was eliminated amid the post-pandemic theater slump. 

“COVID happened, and the loss of theater came, and it seemed like it hasn’t really picked up the same way,” Alex, who asked to be identified only by his first name. “I guess I’ve just been discouraged.”

He makes money these days by collecting recyclables and selling abandoned furniture and electronics online. And once in a while, he said, his friends would invite him to spend the night in their apartments — as they’ve done twice during this cold snap, including during Sunday’s snowstorm. Alex, in exchange, would do chores around the house to help out.

“When I don’t want to impose on them, I go to the subway stations,” he added. “Because when I’m on the train overnight I feel like I’m imposing on the other passengers and whatnot.”

Many of his unsheltered peers, he added, would gather in the cavernous 181th and 168th Street 1 train stations because they’re deep underground and provide better insulation from the cold.

“Unfortunately the police have been bothering us which is really odd because it’s Code Blue,” Alex said, noting how officers have been evicting them from those stations “hard core.” Still, he continued, he turns to those stations for warmth: “I’ll spend the day there, choosing to be warm over being frozen.”

Outreach specialists, he noted, reach out to him “all the time,” with offers to get him placed into one of DHS’s facilities. He’s once taken up their offer to shelter in a single-room occupancy building, but quickly decided it was not for him.

“Upon arrival, I was told, ‘Oh, your room doesn’t have a lock, but don’t worry, it’s cool,’ and it’s just like an instinct. Something just doesn’t seem right. It’s just a big red flag right away,” said Alex, who finds the curfews and visitation rules at shelters restrictive. “There just isn’t a good place to go to, where you actually have your own space. So sleeping on the street is like the devil you know.”

The mid-afternoon sun was now tucked behind the clouds. The numbing wind whipped through Columbus Circle as Alex contemplated his plans for the evening.

“Honestly, right now, I’m just about to go to the bathroom, just to wash up. Stay there for an hour or so, go to the next spot. It really is like moment to moment,” he said, his voice trembling from cold as he spoke. “When you’re homeless you just kind of want to get through the day. You try to make enough money so you can have some food.”

He pushed his shopping cart towards the subway station elevator.

“Being homeless, I’m not sitting around at home watching the Weather Channel,” Alex continued before stepping into the elevator. “The cold sneaks up on you. First it’s uncomfortable, then painful, before you’re like ‘This is dangerous.’ Frostbite is no joke.”

Then in swift seconds the door closed, and the elevator carried Alex underground.

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In the aftermath of a winter storm that belted New York City with more than 10 inches of snow, officials said hundreds of bus shelters and stops were still snowed in, forcing commuters to scale slushy mounds Monday before going on their way.

The piles created by the city’s biggest snowfall in five years were, in some cases, stacked even higher by plows clearing the streets of accumulation and also creating icy obstacle courses for riders.

“It was a bad decision for me, OK?” Virgilio Gabarra, 78, said at a snowed-in bus shelter at Columbus Avenue and West 80th Street in Manhattan. “I thought it would be more convenient to take the bus and get dropped right in front of the church where I’m going — then I got to the stop and saw all this snow and oh, it’s too late now.”

City officials estimated that, by Monday morning, just over half of the 3,400 bus shelters citywide where riders can partially escape the elements before boarding a bus had been cleared. That’s with sub-freezing or single-digit temperatures in the forecast for the rest of this week, upping the potential for a stretch of icy and treacherous commutes.

There are approximately 10,000 New York City Transit bus stops across the city, according to the MTA, which kept more than 2,300 buses running throughout the storm, along with 4,400 subway and Staten Island Railway trains. The 3,400 bus shelters have benches where riders can sit while waiting for a ride.

“It is the Department of Transportation’s responsibility to clear bus stops and we have activated extra resources and DOT staff to be working on that,” Julia Kerson, deputy mayor for operations, said Monday. “This was sort of an extraordinary amount of snow.”

At those shelters that had not been cleared after a storm whose total city accumulation ranged from 8 to 15 inches, according to the National Weather Service, commuters helped each other scale the slopes or navigate around them into the street.

Geraldine McMillian struggled over mounds of snow at the East Fordham Road and Valentine Avenue bus shelter with the help of two fellow commuters at the stop.

“My balance isn’t great,” the 72-year-old woman told THE CITY while waiting in the street for an eastbound Bx12. “This lady helped me, this gentleman helped me and there was another woman who helped me previously where I could not get through.”

McMillian was joined on Fordham Road by several other commuters.

“We’ll be all right as long as they don’t run us over,” she cracked.

The clearing of the areas around bus shelters and bus stops requires help from various parties, including city agencies, contractors and property owners.

Sidewalks and bus stops without shelters are the responsibility of neighboring property owners, according to the DOT, while contractor JCDecaux is charged with removing snow within its 3,400 bus shelters and three feet around them. A DOT spokesperson said the contractor’s crews had been out since 1 p.m. Sunday — a few hours into the winter storm — clearing sheltered stops.

Anyone with complaints about unsafe conditions at bus stops or on sidewalks should contact the city’s 311 service.

The Department of Sanitation had more than 500 emergency snow shovelers at work Monday to clear three-foot paths between the sidewalk and the street so that people can board buses, a spokesperson said. The department hires the workers for $19.14 an hour — a rate that goes up to $28.71 after the first 40 hours worked in a week — to help clear snow and ice from bus stops, crosswalks, fire hydrants and other public areas. 

A top official with the largest union for transit workers told THE CITY that conditions during and after snowstorms add up to create a “very challenging” environment for bus operators.

“The piles of snow at the bus stops limit the space people have,” said Gary Rosario, a vice president with Transport Workers Union Local 100. “If you have a small group at a bus stop, they all have to squeeze into a little spot.”

Donald Yates, another TWU vice president, said that during snowstorms, buses move at slower speeds, with operators instructed to pull up parallel to bus stops to avoid the potential of a bus sliding.

“Sometimes the customers get angry as to why the bus driver didn’t pull into the bus stop,” said Yates, who represents Manhattan and Bronx bus operators. “But we’re not supposed to so the bus doesn’t get stuck and it’s more of a safety thing.”

While waiting on East Fordham Road, Arnaldo Duarte, 59, acknowledged the challenge of quickly clearing thousands of bus stops after such a significant snowfall.

“They’re doing the best they can,” he said. “But they really should be doing a better job.”

A few minutes later, a Bx12 pulled up and Duarte stepped over the snow bank to help a lady wearing a backpack and then a man walking with the help of a cane.

“It can feel like climbing a mountain,” he said.

Additional reporting by Katie Honan.

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