Several city bus stops — including one right outside Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center — were still dangerously plagued by piles of snow several days after Winter Storm Fern, upset riders told The Post.
The treacherous mounds forced commuters — including some with canes — to navigate narrow, slippery paths down to the clearing in the roadway to their bus or avoid the spot altogether because of wheelchair and walker inaccessibility.
“Someone in a wheelchair couldn’t get over the mounds,” said Memorial Sloan Kettering office coordinator Lakeya Holmes at the bus shelter between East 67th and 68th streets.
Jessica Alequin, a financial specialist at nearby Weill Cornell Medicine, said, “I saw some people with walkers going in the street to get around the mounds.”
The mountains of snow were still a major issue outside the Upper East Side facility Wednesday night — more than three days after the blizzard started hammering the city Sunday — but appeared cleared by Thursday.
“Some of my co-workers have seen patients fall coming off the bus on Tuesday,” Lakeya said.
“MSK takes our sidewalks very seriously – you see how they’re cleared,” she said.
Alequin, 36, said, “On Tuesday, there wasn’t even a path cleared to get onto the bus.
“We had to climb over the mountain of snow.”
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While private property owners are responsible for cleaning their sidewalks, the city’s Department of Transportation is responsible for clearing roughly 3,400 bus stops with shelters through a third-party contractor, JCDecaux, agency reps said.
Consistently below-freezing temperatures this week have resulted in persistent snow and ice, which may take weeks to completely rid the streets of, city officials have said.
As of Thursday morning, the DOT said JCDecaux had cleared 98% of the bus shelters – though nearly 200 311 complaints about bus shelter snow removal are still “in progress,” according to city data.
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Complaints represent all five boroughs, including about 70 in both Manhattan and Brooklyn; 63 in Queens; 40 in the Bronx and 21 in Staten Island.
Of those, only about 160 complaints across the city have since been forwarded to the DOT’s contractor for snow removal operations.
