De Blasio urges New Yorkers to stay inside during snowstorm

Mayor Bill de Blasio urged New Yorkers to stay indoors later Tuesday and get off the roads as a bone-chillingly cold coastal storm was forecast to dump up to a foot of snow on New York City.

But de Blasio said he was keeping schools open for now, but after-school programs were canceled. Express subway trains will be switched to local service after the evening rush hour, and the mayor asked people to check on their elderly neighbors.

"People should stay in tonight," de Blasio told reporters at City Hall. "I keep saying it, and I'll say it throughout the day: People need to stay in. It's going to be deceptively slippery, visability's going to be an issue and the best thing that all motorists can do -- for all of us -- is stay in unless it's an absolute emergency."

Sanitation Commissioner John Doherty said that temperatures would plummet so low at night that road salting won't be effective, so his crews would switch their focus to full-time plowing.

"People have to adjust to the conditions," Doherty said.

De Blasio said that more than 2,000 Sanitation workers are on 13-hour shifts, and the department has deployed 450 salt-spreaders. As snow accumulates, Sanitation will deploy more than 1,700 vehicles equipped with snow plows and Parks and Transportation departments will add equipment to that effort starting at 7 p.m.

De Blasio, who shoveled out his own Park Slope home during a snowstorm earlier this month, was noncommital about whether he would be personally digging out his home this time.

"That front walk will be shoveled on time. How we work that out within our family discussions is still up in the air. But I guarantee you, it'll be ready."

With Emily Ngo