Traffic Disaster: Utica Avenue Shut Down for Hours

A traffic nightmare has unfolded along Utica Ave. in Crown Heights, with dozens of MTA buses ensnared in gridlocked traffic, after several inches of snow descended upon New York City.

The idle buses have blocked off the entire Utica Avenue, causing a massive traffic nightmare throughout the area.

The Sanitation Dept. and the MTA are already pointing fingers at each other, each insisting that the other is to blame for the disaster.

High-volume traffic streets in New York City are designated as ‘Red Zones’ or ‘Priority Zones,’ indicating that they are given priority for snow plowing in order to ensure traffic flow. Utica Avenue is one of them, yet it has remained unplowed and effectively closed since early Monday morning.

As snow began accumulating, the heavy city buses began to get stuck on the Crown to Carroll incline in the road, unable to climb the hill on the slick roads. The steady current of buses began to overflow, and backed up all the way past Empire Boulevard and beyond, preventing snow plows and salt trucks from reaching the area.

At around 12:00pm, an army of snow plows descended on the area and began trying to unclog traffic.

Before the work even began, the finger pointing was already underway. An MTA bus driver told CrownHeights.info that it was the sanitation workers’ fault that the streets weren’t plowed, but a sanitation supervisor retorted that the MTA failed to equip their buses with chains.

Plows are still working to free up the roadways. They hope to have traffic return to normal within the next hour.

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