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It's amazing what some snow removal can do to the morning commute

Jackie Murphy reports on her commute:

Tons of snow hauled away on Gallivan and Morton last night. Huge improvement on roads! Commute yesterday Dot to JP 1.75 hrs, today 28 min.

ColdSummer checks in from Forest Hills:

Hyde Park Ave is Back to NORMAL. Hallelujah . No More Gridlocks

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I was also amazed at the difference in the South End this morning... Mass Ave was moving in a way it hasn't moved in four weeks. Did Marty have the entire DPW burning the midnight oil?

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They are finally able to make forward progress.

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I took the commuter rail this AM instead of driving due to the bad traffic over the last few days.....and first train was full so had to wait for another train....and they still can't tell anyone exactly when trains will show up!

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Walking this morning, earlier than yesterday so theoretically before the crush, I tried to figure out the choke point. Perhaps Ukraine Way, with the left turn light outbound going on way too long. One theory is that Centre Street is still SFNUed, but I don't go that far. In any event I went well with the flow, and thankfully the huge piles on the corners are gone!

And before the construction doom and gloomers get started, yes you will be able to rail on, but after construction actually starts.

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It's the cab stand by Forest Hills I think. They did clear the two travel lanes but didn't clear to the curb, so the cabs are idling in the righthand travel lane because their usual spot is snowed in. That's got that area down to one lane, with everyone trying to squeeze into the left lane. This morning that was blocking things back past Ukraine Way.

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Of course, I don't see that since I am in the busway at the time.

I do know that in snowless times, an ill timed delivery to one of the station vendors really backs things up.

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Those cabs come in handy when the commuter rail trains to Hyde park are cancelled and a bunch of us take the orange line to forest hills and then a can to HP to get my car. In fact, that cab stand appears to be the most reliable part of my commute!

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I watched them do curb to curb removal on our stretch of Washington Street a few days ago.

They had one massive bucket loader that was 'scraping' to the curb and loading the dump truck. Accompanying the large loader was a smaller front-end loader that was doing "cleanup" and occasionally pushing hard to access piles of snow into the street so the big bucket could grab it.

The amazing thing was that they were doing this all live on Washington Street without stoping traffic or even a police detail -- even with the dump truck on the opposite side of the curb being cleared which required the bucket loader to cross into different travel lanes etc.. The skill of the operators was pretty amazing to watch. Definite props to whomever they are

Of course this would be 100x easier with a snowblower mounted to the front of the bucket loader that could just constantly fire snow into the dump truck (like the common example of montreal) . Somerville has at least one; hopefully BOS will pick up a few this year for use in the future.

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I'll second that. I watched them on my street recently as well. Very impressive work.

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I saw essentially a giant snow blower clearing Walter Street the other day. Is that Harvard's? Who's responsible for clearing the snow along the Arboreteum, that's where it was.

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Boston has some of these -- I saw one the other day clearing snow on Walter St., but instead of a dump truck, it was just spraying the snow in to the Arboretum. I think anywhere that you see a smooth wall of snow at the curb, rather than something more mound like, it was done by snow blower.

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Looks like Vaughn and I pass through Walter St. at roughly the same time, and post on UHub at roughly the same time.

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The city definitely has some of these or possible borrowed them from somewhere else. I have seen them around too.

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Chestnut Hill Ave in Brighton was cleared out too, I was shocked when I saw it this morning. Now there's somewhere to put our garbage bins and they can finally be emptied. It's been a month since that was possible.

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Parts of Comm Ave. near BU are cleared all the way from curb to curb. Theres even enough space for parking, travel lanes AND bike lanes!

Saw way less traffic walking the bike over Storrow to the Esplanade than previous days this week.

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Charlestown could use some help with snow removal

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Most of Comm Ave around BC is still a 1+ lane nightmare. Washington St near Comm Ave is also barely 2 cars wide in places with people parking poorly making the bad situation even worse. Anything not a major route has only ever seen a plow and nothing more since it snowed the first 2 feet.

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its clearly an effective cure to traffic congestion. Unfortunately by spring the lesson is forgotten and various advocates call for road downsizing, often to create bike lanes or more grassy area (a DCR favorite).

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Have you looked at the "lanes" on most of the roads around town right now?

If they hadn't put in bike lanes on a lot of the major arteries (usually at the expense of parking lanes not travel lanes), then there wouldn't even BE second travel lanes OR parking lanes in parts of the city right now. The bike lanes have been absconded all over the place so that they wouldn't have to plow to the curb, etc. Those bike lanes are keeping the city more normal for traffic than it would be otherwise.

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When they first started putting the bike lanes in Roslindale, one of my first thoughts (after, that's nice) was "so, that line will be the limit for parking when the snow narrows the lanes in the winter."

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The bike lanes did not take away any parking, at least anywhere I have seen. Cars are parking many feet from the curb due to the snow, regardless of any bike lanes.

The bike lanes make it more difficult for vehicles to maneuver, especially buses, which have to stay in the right lane and move to the curb at stops.

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http://www.boston.com/yourtown/news/back_bay/2012/01/mass_ave_bu_bridge_...

Where parking lanes were not effected, travel lanes were narrowed to fit it. Snow partially blocking the parking lanes has meant parking in the bike lane has become acceptable. In other places, parking takes part of the bike lane while the traffic drives in the rest of it so that the left lane can avoid snow that never got plowed fully.

Point still stands.

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Exactly. It's very interesting. Roads with bike lanes lose them to snow/parking in the winter, and roads without them end up getting defacto bike lanes as the right half of the right lanes become blocked with snow/parking and unusable by moving cars but perfect width for bikes.

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Nonantum Road, Memorial Drive, Concord Ave., Western Ave (Cambridge), BU bridge, Longfellow bridge, Mass Ave. Arlington (in progress) Greenough Blvd, Watertown (planned). Most are DCR controlled. Mass Ave. Boston is the most notable parking removal. I'm sure I've left out many roads from this list.

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Give it a few days/weeks for people to realize how much easier driving is once again, and we'll be back to our usual congestion levels.

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Signs up all along the heavily traveled stretch of Huntingdon from the S.Huntingdon/Rt 9/Arborway convergance to Brighams Circle but dozens of cars still double parked along eastbound side.

There's been some lane clearing - but it's uneven enough that travel is still one lane in each direction for most of that length.

With the trolleys taking a lane on the street from Brigham's to Heath, I'm not sure how emergency vehicles are managing to get through that section, especially during the morning and afternoon rush.

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One lane road with a million express busses during rush hour, everybody from Brighton/Brookline going west to the Pike, everybody from Newton going east to Storrow Drive.

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I ran down there tonight, and it was pretty empty, as opposed to my ill fated run 2 weeks ago when it was full to the brim. A front loader was waiting along with a Public Works supervisor in his car.

In related news, West Street in Hyde Park was blocked by the police for snow removal. And the signs were up on the inbound side of Washington Street tonight, so hopefully the streets are really being cleared up.

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I grew up on HP Ave in Roslindale. My parents' house is one of many in that stretch that was built in up on a retaining wall with no driveway and my mother is the one that owns the house outright now since my father passed. My mother doesn't drive and she is in her 70's.

Obviously during times like this, myself and my siblings pitch in to help out, especially during the winter...

Since the house has no driveway the only option is on-street parking. The "neighbors" don't don't live at the location, they park because its convenient to them for whatever reason even if they live four or five houses down the street. When it comes time to shovel out their vehicals, they dump the snow on the sidewalk outside the retaining wall of the house then have the audacity to put "space-savers" in the location.

This winter, not only did the "neighbors" shovel snow onto the sidewalk, the City of Boston plow contractors pushed snow up onto areas of the side walk where the front loader could reach...

I haven't been able to park at my mother's house due to the "neighbors" taking up the immediate spaces outside, the City of Boston puts up these stapled stick posters about no parking on snow banks because of removal but they don't remove anything for days on end then they ticket you if your parked a foot away from the curb because of the snowbanks...

Trying to convince my mother to sell the house and get the heck out of that crappy location...

Just griping... no real solutions... Have a good day everyone!

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