Spinning Wheels in Harlem

clipped from cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com February 10, 2010, 10:30 am Spinning Wheels in Harlem By COREY KILGANNON Corey Kilgannon/The New York Times By 9 a.m., even the streets that were plowed retained a slick sheet of slushy icy cover that made driving treacherous. This was especially the case on sloping streets like the ascending stretch of Broadway just north of 125th Street. Two oil trucks held up traffic as they stopped and started again, gaining and losing traction. Finally they moved on slowly, rolling red lights honking their horns instead of stopping and risking losing momentum and becoming stuck yet again. A city bus became stuck at a bus stop at 131st Street, its wheels spinning uselessly on the snow-slick pavement. “They put chains on the wheels of some of the buses, but not this one,” said the bus driver trying to pull the bus out, as passengers waited on the curb.