When does the city start fining itself?
By adamg - 12/30/10 - 10:52 am
Yesterday, it was River Street in Hyde Park. Today's example of municipal non-compliance with muncipal ordinances comes from W. 2 Street in South Boston, where, as one resident complained to the city this morning:
Please shovel snow. Can't cross bridge. Almost got jut by an MBTA bus walking in the street again.
Ed. note: If you have the city's Citizen Connect mobile apps, you can browse snow complaints in the app. If you don't, though, the city has a Web site for that.
Location
Javascript is required to view this map.
Comments
Same thing when I lived in
Same thing when I lived in Allston. The worst stretches of sidewalk were always the bridges, etc., that the city (or state?) was supposed to clean. Oh well, I guess only losers walk anyway.
Same thing in Belmont, for
Same thing in Belmont, for what it's worth. I was trying to cross the street between the police station and the town hall and I had to walk in the street against the light because there were two feet of snow on the sidewalk and the walk signal button was totally inaccessible.
Jurisdictional issues
Boston has such a patchwork of road "owners" that you might be complaining to city of Boston about a bridge "owned" by MassDOT or DCR. In Cambridge they'll forward your complaint to the right agency, don't know what Citizen's connect does. They might say "closed" once they forward it to DCR and it still might not ever be addressed..
Maybe they're starting now
There were workers this morning (finally) shoveling the Washington Street sidewalk outside English High School.
looking through the posts
it seems there are several complaints about this bridge. Not sure if they're all from the same person, but they all say "closed", and apparently still nothing is done. Where is Sgt. Tankle when you need him to write Hizzoner a ticket?
It's laughable to think
It's laughable to think they'll clear this bridge, when they don't even clear the East Broadway bridge right next to the C6 police station.
heavy machinery
So how would this bridge be cleared of snow? I doubt Boston has those as-narrow-as-a-sidewalk plows, nor would it likely be safe to employ it on this bridge. Sounds like you're expecting someone to shovel all these bridges by hand? That's a fair amount of work.
So how would all these
So how would all these streets be cleared of snow? Sounds like you're expecting someone to pay a plow driver to go down each and every street? That's a fair amount of work and money.
Why should pedestrian access to a bridge be any less important than vehicle access?
pedestrians
As someone who had to lift his kid's stroller over 2' snowbanks yesterday, I am not happy with the pedestrian areas of Rozi Square.
I guess all I'm saying is that paying someone to put megahours to drive a plow is one thing, paying someone to _manually_ shovel a bridge is something else entirely.
If I was shovelling, let me tell you, the urge to just flip the snow over the edge would be pretty intense.
Flipping the snow over the edge
would drop the snow into Fort Point Channel -- is that a bad thing?
The bridge is over the
The bridge is over the seaport access road, so dropping it over would result in throwing it on a busy road.
Either way, the city isn't allowed to dump snow in the harbor anymore, and for good reason.
Either way, it's the job of the city. Residents and businesses have the responsibility to shovel the public ways in front of the things they own, and the city public works (is supposed to) takes care of the rest.
We've all seen quite a few pubic service personal standing around doing nothing. Put them to work, or get rid of them for someone happy and willing to get a paycheck.
modus operandi for mayor's hotline
The system is purposefully designed to not show comments or completion stats, because that would be used against the mayor's administration to show how useless he and his empty-spoon employees are. If they don't like your request, they just hit "closed", and nobody is the wiser. Worse still, if the division of the city that the request is assigned to doesn't feel like doing the work, same business. Nobody audits the system (such as the mayor's office checking to make sure work is actually done by city departments.)
People need to just boycott the system and start using a system run by a neutral third party, so we can see how many problems there are, how long they take to get resolved, etc. There's at least 1-2 that offer virtually identical features, but far more (like discussion and comments.)
Links to them please!
Links to them please!
Bitter Musings Of A Jaded Libertarian
[I guess that title could be used for most of my postings here, as well as for much of my blog. Oh, well.]
What makes anyone here think that ticketing of private citizens is anything more than another excuse to either raise revenue or harass folks on a whim? And that the city gives a damn if the sidewalks under their jurisdiction are cleared?
I mean, really. Did you all think it was an honest effort at good governance? It is to laugh.
[Wow. That's pretty cynical, even for me. I should be ashamed, but I'm not.]
Suldog
http://jimsuldog.blogspot.com
like most libertarians...
...you have the naivete of a 15 year old child.
The law is (supposed) to be enforced by the city for public safety. In reality, it was probably only used against people who snubbed the mayor, didn't kiss his ass enough, or who were troublemakers politically.
The recent court case will change everything- property owners now have to fear people slipping and suing them if they're on their property.
Guess who owns the sidewalks in Boston?
The city not taking care of clearing snow from bus stops, street corners, etc will fix itself as soon as the first person slips and cracks their skull and sues the city.
Sounds perfectly fair to me.
+1
Always love people who talk about "the city" or "the government" as if they're one of the Marvel Comics Watchers just admiring the whole thing from a distance.
W. 2 St ?
That's why the City isn't doing something about this complaint. It's either W.2nd St or West Second St. Don't see 2 street anywhere on the map.