SCRANTON -- Monday's snowfall is just starting to create a new problem in our area's largest city. People in Scranton are running out of places to put all that snow.
It's much easier to drive out on the roads in Scranton than it was about 24 hours ago. The challenge now is parking. It's because of some sizable piles of snow that clogging things up, especially in the downtown.
Running errands on busy Courthouse Square in Scranton nowadays may require a special amount of grace and balance. The same could be said for getting TV interviews.
Timothy Huzzard and his fiancée had to take care getting into their car on North Washington Avenue.
"Yeah, it's hard because I said you don't want to park too close to the street and have your car get hit. You try and get as close as you can and getting the door open, it's hard," Huzzard said.
Huzzard has a prosthetic leg and worried he wouldn't make it over the pile of snow between his car and the curb. The barrier of snow is at least a few feet high on nearly every street in downtown Scranton. And with even more snow forecast this week, expect the piles to get even higher.
One of the essential parts of parking downtown is paying the meter. It's not fun when the weather's nice. It's especially not fun now.
"Well, it sucks. Sorry, but it does. I mean, you've got to drive over, you've got to walk all over these piles just to get to that meter and if you don't put your money in there, they'll give you a ticket! So, I mean, come on! Move all this snow and there won't be a problem with me getting at that meter," complained Brenda O'Donnell of Moosic.
While the snow swallows meters, parkers are calling on the city to move the snow elsewhere. O'Donnell is afraid her daughter who works downtown might get hurt during the last leg of her commute.
"She thinks it's funny but it's not because she could get hurt on that. So, they should really take care of these streets a little better than what they're doing."
Scranton DPW workers plan to remove the snow piles downtown using backhoes and dump trucks. That will happen overnight on Friday into Saturday.
