Hizzonah visits Jamaica Plain; clogs up traffic, leaves the place trashed
Oh yeah, and he lit a tree. He had with him Santa, the world's most hyperactive MC, a strange half-elf-half-christmas-ornament or two, a couple of Tacticool-dressed Boston Police officers, a few detectives/mayoral-protection-looking types, a decent-sounding band, and an armada of vehicles. Total count: Two tour trolleys, a big "stage" on a trailer, a mysterious Chevy Tahoe hybrid, 5 motorcycle units, 6-7 cruisers (one parked in a bus stop), a cherrypicker and pickup from the city (both parked in a bus stop), and an SUV each from Boston EMS and Boston Fire (safety first.) I happened to wander by with my camera and took photos.
They blocked off the Centre Street side of the Monument square; not very smart, given the fire station is a block up the road and the massive amounts of Saturday-afternoon traffic South and Centre usually see. I only saw one officer do a few minutes of directing, and he spent part of it standing in the middle of the street talking on his cell phone.
Someone was passing out flyers for Boston Main Streets and tiny containers of eggnog; one of the trolleys had Dunkin Donuts coffee for the dozens of people the Mayor had in tow. All of it ended up as litter on the street, along with the ticker tape the mayor fired off. In Jamaica Plain? Is he brain-dead? It's all over the road, sidewalk, and lawn of the Unitarian church.
Robert Dunford's department vehicle was there, and whoever was driving it left with a woman wearing what looked like an MWRA-logo'd fleece jacket, which was a bit odd...
Comments
When was this?
I was shopping along Centre St this afternoon, then went to Harvest. Didn't see any of this.
http://1smootshort.blogspot.com
What do you like?
And did you stick around to see if the DPW cleaned up all the litter like they usually do?
an hour and a half later they hadn't
I'm too lazy (and it's too cold/far) to check again. A busybody has to have his priorities, and mine is being warm :)
I dont know about Boston but
I dont know about Boston but some other places Ive done events with send the trucks out when they are available, sometimes thats a few hours after the event. Its hard to coordinate exact times, especially if there were other events happening in the city that required a DPW cleaning crew, they would just make their rounds and get there when they could, which could be 2 hours later.
"We'd like to thank the
"We'd like to thank the Mayor for this, the overtime we have just received."
"is he brain dead?"
I presume that's a rhetorical question....
How long until someone in a
How long until someone in a wheelchair wanting to get on a bus sues the police department for continuously using bus stops as parking?
there's a long line of people in front of BPD
That stop where the cruiser was parted is almost perpetually occupied by customers of the convenience market, pizzeria, and chinese food place...or the drivers for the pizza/chinese place. Same story with the one in front of Bukhara- it's like a "5 minute parking" area for CVS et al. Same with the bus stop by huntington and south huntingon (pizzeria.)
guilty here
I've definitely parked in the bus stop in front of Joseph's before...
take a pic and send it in.
no one should be parking in those spots.
But another problem I find is that these buses never pull all the way in even when they have an empty bus stop. Often times they just stop in the right lane, block traffic and pick up passangers from there. Its annoying.
Call the MBTA
I've called a few times when I couldn't pull into a street because a bus was blocking the intersection, or when a bus decided to use the "bigger vehicle has the right-of-way" rule when pulling out into traffic. The customer service people immediately confirmed that, yes, buses have to obey traffic laws the same as anyone else, and added that they're supposed to be particularly careful about making sure there's room in an intersection before proceeding, since, you know, they're huge.
But we shouldn't have to call the MBTA. The police should freakin enforce traffic laws. It's fun to pull up statistics on how many tickets they give for stuff like blocking intersections, jaywalking, having music too loud, having tailpipes that sound like jackhammers. It's usually a single digit per year, if even that. I'm imagining that police officers see this stuff happen daily, since I see each of these things about once per day, and I don't spend much time driving and don't spend any of that time actually looking for these things.
http://1smootshort.blogspot.com
Laws do vary ...
In Boston, traffic has the right of way, but if you head back to the Northwest for the holidays, you might find yourself getting a ticket if you don't yield to the bus. In Portland (and I suspect Seattle, too, from the way the drivers acted), the bus leaving the stop has the right of way. They made this law because buses were not using the stops when they knew they would get trapped.
buses
Im talking about when there is an empty bus stop and instead of pulling in, the bus just stops in the lane and lets people on and off. It defeats the purpose of the bus stop.
London, (probably like the northwest) has pro-bus drivers who can bang corners like Tony Stewart and actually pull into the spaces.
The Bus Stops Here
That's what I'm talking about, too.
In Portland, this was creating problems with cars stuck behind buses, and bus drivers not using the stops because they wouldn't be able to pull back out.
The law was changed such that the bus has the right of way when pulling out of the stop. Now the buses use the stops, the cars can get by while passengers get on and off ... but you have to look for that turn signal and stop and yield to the bus leaving the stop.
de facto standard
I like that solution. It's the de facto standard for auto drivers in Boston already.
Thats only because the bus
Thats only because the bus is friggin huge, it only works if the bus driver is aggressive and you get the impression that he would run you off the road if he had to because he is hopped up on coffee and on his 10th hour of the day and happens to be stuck on a busy city route lol. If the bus driver is passive about it I see people still attempting to get around the bus.
oh yeah and he made about 50
oh yeah and he made about 50 kids day by having Santa stop by. don't be a grinch
inconvenience to everyone else?
I think the treelighting idea itself is nice, but the execution was poor and disrespectful to the people he supposedly represents and serves. Is it worth it to make 50 kids happy in such a way as to inconvenience thousands of people? Clearly some people were not in a holiday mood, given the amount of horns I heard.
There is a lot the mayor could have done.
Examples:
1)Had signs about the road closure posted a block or two up with a detour sign
2)BPD officers at 2-3 points in the square directing/stopping traffic
3)Faced the stage towards the small park, had families come into the park, and thus not need to close any roads
4)Picked up his mess immediately after he left it (it's snowed now- good luck picking up that ticker tape) or not fired it off in the first place, since this is JP, where being environmentally friendly is an important lesson a lot of parents probably try to convey to their kids
5)Not tied up more than a dozen officers, who pretty much sat around and talked. Also, apparently BPD has never heard of ride-sharing, or vans? Seven cruisers? C'mon, guys.
6)Kept things timely- had the band play, the MC welcome people, given out the eggnog, said a little something, had santa work the crowd, thrown the switch...and then LEFT! Or, given it was nippy out, couldn't he have thrown the switch and then (along with the UU minister) welcomed people into the church (or the non-denominational Curtis Hall 300 feet away) and hung out with his constituents there for a bit?
7)Marked off enough space for the planned # of vehicles so that the city wouldn't have to use bus stops to park police/DPW vehicles.
I mean really- if some dumbass from the intertubes like me can think of all this, why can't they? :) I'm not saying the ideas are great, but...c'mon.
Craft Fair
There were craft fairs going on in the church, the Elliot School, and the Loring Greenough House at the same time. So they really couldn't have moved inside.
But I think the crowds going to the craft fairs were the real cause of the traffic suckage, not the mayor. Things were crazy long after his circus had left.
Ya know he brought Santa
Ya know he brought Santa with him, people had a good time, and some people sat in traffic for a while. Sure it could have been planned better, but that would require more people on staff (ever run a major event on city streets and had to make all those considerations? Its hard as hell for people that do it for a living, it all seems much easier on paper then it is in execution. I work for a private company that has to deal with some of this stuff so we have to deal with all the red tape, but thats the benefit of being the government you dont have to follow all the rules and ya know thats ok, cause the kids had a good time and he was trying to build some community spirit) then they currently have.
One thing I do like about Menino
Is how he seems to show up at all of these little neighborhood things. And you can go up and talk to him, it's not like he has some huge phalanx of big, menacing guys in dark suits surrounding him (based on the events I've seen him at in Roslindale and West Roxbury, it's usually just him and, at most, a driver).
Compare and contrast him
Compare and contrast him with our governor... Menino does all sorts of really stupid things and isnt well edumicated, but he seems to connect with people. He thinks these little events are important to do, which I assume is why he always gets reelected.
Noise noise noise noise!
The mayor with his mumbles and Santa's red belly
Snarled up the traffic and made the town smelly
With the reek of hot cocoa and stench of fresh donuts.
I banged on my car horn and thought I would go nuts.
Oh, they brought out their tree and their stage and a trolley,
And they spoke and they sang and they acted all jolly
And they blew their flu-flubas, they banged their tartinkas,
They blew their who-hubas and banged their gardinkas!
i'm not a fan of the excess
i'm not a fan of the excess caravan of folks, but that was just one stop across the city. there were 2 stops in JP, one in Roxbury, one in the SOuth End and another in Brighton. Thousands of kids across the city had holiday celebrations that were capped off with the neighborhood tree lighting. maybe they slacked off in JP, but it seemed fairly well-organized. There was even a Salvation Army truck giving out free coffee and hot chocolate.