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The city has begun digging out from Thursday’s storm. Today snow removal took place in Ball Sq.
Photos by Mike Moccia of Ball Square Café, which is open for business.
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This is great. Now I just wish the city would plow sidewalks. Homeowners/residents are just not doing their job well. It’s hard to do our commute by T, because walking in some areas is tough… Homeowners/residents aren’t doing their part. Some sidewalks are well done, but others aren’t shoveled at all. Some have only a very narrow passage cleared, so anyone pushing a stroller/etc (which we are) has a serious challenge.
The City also needs to heavily fine construction sites that do not shovel or salt. There are many homes being renovated where the “owner” does not abide by the same shoveling requirements.
I have no problem with the people who were out on the streets doing the work, but this city is a mess right now. I’ve seen 3 plow trucks come up the street in a convoy for a few inches. I think we saw one plow all day Thursday, and I’m not sure there were any on Friday. On Sunday afternoon they disrupted Davis Square for ‘snow removal’, yet Monday night you practically needed a dog sled to get through the lot at Rite Aid. Yet there was the PCO ready and willing to give tickets to parking meter scofflaws. Let’s get real, it’s time to eliminate the snow emergency parking ban. It’s pretty clear that it is only for the revenue and nothing else. Also, letting people park in public lots, then telling them the next day they need to get out does nothing but unleash hundreds of cars onto streets filled with snow. It turns into survival of the fittest. If you take your car out for 5 minutes someone has parked in your spot. Do it like Boston does. Leave the cars on the street, plow the middle, then everyone has to shovel out their car, but they’ll have a spot.
Much of this in my mind comes down to you get what you pay for, and perhaps our expectations are a bit high.
I wonder what permit holders would be willing to pay to not have to worry about challenges in snow clean up. would it be worth $30 / month to park and know that when it snows, both sides of the street will be clear w/in 3 business days?
Also, is it really fair to expect people who don’t drive, or pay for off street parking to subsidize people who don’t?
Are the DPW workers still without a new city contract? I wonder if that has anything to do with it.
The streets since this storm have been like the wild west. Every side street I was on could only accommodate one car. There was, therefore, a lot of backing up when a car was coming towards you. People had to back out of streets, which with limited visability due to the snow piles is really dangerous for other cars or for pedestrians. What is going on?
Overall I have to say the DPW did a great job keeping our roads safe and usable during the storm. Kudos to them. The place I see a challenge is in the efforts to clean to the curb. The city has no plan communicated to residents on how they approach it.
I think the mayor’s policy of forcing parking bans all the time is causing big problems with parking & leading to the need for expensive snow removal with bulldozers, etc.. after a relatively small snow (sorry, but 12″ is not massive). In the old days, cars stayed put on both sides of the street. The folks who got plowed in had their work cut out for them getting their cars out, but at the end of the day their cars were more or less at the curb & the snow found its way to the nooks & crannies of the street. You’d loose spaces now & then to snow piles and the general level of plowing would seem sloppy (like Cambridge), but everything worked.
Now what happens is folks move the cars, the plows do a crappy job of plowing to anywhere near the curb, and all the cars come back to huge snow berms that keep them from parking without blocking the road or spending hours hacking back the snow berm. Yes, the driving lane is nice & clean, but parking is impossible. I’d argue it’s worse for firetrucks now because they’re dodging cars instead of snow. The result of all this is that we’re spending millions to excavate the snow berms after every snow. What’s the point to the parking ban?
The point to the parking ban is issuing tickets to get more money.
Remember the ‘snow emergency’ called a few years back by this mayor and dpw commissioner where cars were towed, then it didn’t snow?
Just another money grab.