General Infrastructure

Should we be equipping for the once-in-a decade record breaking snowfall event, or for the 95th percentile? Here we get 2 ft of snow rarely, while that happens multiple times a year in Canada. Our average annual total over the last 25 years is half of what montreal gets.

Edit: the piece of equipment we should invest in isn't a snow melter. It's a few of these things, snowblower attachments for the wheel loaders so that you can load the drifts and berms into dump trucks much more efficiently. Watching the DPW crews do it with a bucket and a few Bobcats, the way they do it now, is much slower and less effective. I believe MassDOT has a few of these, and a few self propelled versions, to clear the plow berm on highway shoulders. Useful even in not-major snowfall events.
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Longfellow said:
Just car brained nonsense
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I have been traveling around the city exclusively on foot and by transit since the storm, and it's miserable. Certain areas have had more thorough sidewalk clearing, such as the Longwood Medical Area, but neighborhoods like Beacon Hill and Chinatown still have 5-foot piles of snow at every corner making visibility of vehicles challenging for pedestrians, and many sidewalks only have a narrow strip of slushy icy walkable space with knee-high snowbanks between that and the road. Even today I saw the #8 drop off a guy at a bus stop near Ruggles that had a sidewalk snowbank like that, so he was unable to get from the bus door to the sidewalk without walking 30 feet in the street to find a gap. It's... very bad.
 
Somerville DPW has a few of these, but I haven't seen them in action after this storm, the snow removal operations I've seen have used skid steers etc.
 
The biggest thing Boston could do (and should, in my opinion) is to shift more sidewalk clearing from private responsibility to municipal responsibility.

In a perfect world, the city would be collecting data on sidewalk usage and any sidewalk above a certain threshold would fall under municipal snow clearing responsibility. The fact that the city takes on the responsibility of clearing even the least used public roadways, but doesn't touch many, significantly higher usage sidewalks is backwards. That would be a good starting point.
 
bigeman312 said:
The biggest thing Boston could do (and should, in my opinion) is to shift more sidewalk clearing from private responsibility to municipal responsibility.
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I remember always finding it amusing when you can tell there's an absentee landlord... I think there was a cruddy rowhouse in Kenmore Square on the wide sidewalks near Charlesgate that used to have neighbors that cleaned right up to the property line, with a crisp edge on either side.
 
bigeman312 said:
The biggest thing Boston could do (and should, in my opinion) is to shift more sidewalk clearing from private responsibility to municipal responsibility.
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Are there any big cities that do a particularly good job with sidewalk snow removal? If so, I'm curious who's responsible for clearance.

On one hand: sure, maybe it'd be better to do coordinated snow removal on a municipal scale. On the other hand: homeowners and landlords are currently legally obligated to remove snow. Rather than taking the responsibility away from them and giving it to city government, why not fine landowners who fail to do their job?
 
ball_square said:
Are there any big cities that do a particularly good job with sidewalk snow removal? If so, I'm curious who's responsible for clearance.

On one hand: sure, maybe it'd be better to do coordinated snow removal on a municipal scale. On the other hand: homeowners and landlords are currently legally obligated to remove snow. Rather than taking the responsibility away from them and giving it to city government, why not fine landowners who fail to do their job?
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Land owners are fined, they simply do not pay the fines. And many landowners do the minimal possible to comply, leaving a barely passable mess with no recourse.

One place where the City really stepped up is clearing the sidewalks on the Turnpike bridges between Back Bay, Bay Village, Chinatown and South End. Those are pretty critical links for people in those neighborhoods, for shopping, school access, etc. MassDOT used to refuse to plow the sidewalks on the bridges. The City finally gave up and started using their skid steers to clear them.
 
ball_square said:
Are there any big cities that do a particularly good job with sidewalk snow removal? If so, I'm curious who's responsible for clearance.

On one hand: sure, maybe it'd be better to do coordinated snow removal on a municipal scale. On the other hand: homeowners and landlords are currently legally obligated to remove snow. Rather than taking the responsibility away from them and giving it to city government, why not fine landowners who fail to do their job?
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Montreal does a great job, and yes it's municipal.

Fundamentally I think it's not something that makes much sense to devolve to landowners. Especially in a city where the city builds, designs, and maintains the sidewalks in every other sense.

100,000 random people are never going to do a good or remotely consistent job at snow removal.

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It's also a difficult obligation to keep up with - plenty of the city is still SFH, too.

Seems problematic that a homeowner has to somehow know it's going to snow before they leave for a vacation/work trip for a week or two and have to have made arrangements with someone else to shovel the sidewalk for them if an event that they can't predict occurs while they're away.

I don't feel like this is an easy problem to just fine your way out of, and doing so is pretty much asking for some news stories with terrible optics for the city when it turns out that a bunch of the people who didn't shovel for a week or two were in unexpectedly in the hospital or dealing with some true emergency that came up.

It's one thing when it's a few small fines, but the kind of fines that would actually get a big landlord to care are also the kind that will be financially ruinous to some average person.
 
millerm277 said:
Montreal does a great job, and yes it's municipal.

Fundamentally I think it's not something that makes much sense to devolve to landowners. Especially in a city where the city builds, designs, and maintains the sidewalks in every other sense.

100,000 random people are never going to do a good or remotely consistent job at snow removal.

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It's also a difficult obligation to keep up with - plenty of the city is still SFH, too.

Seems problematic that a homeowner has to somehow know it's going to snow before they leave for a vacation/work trip for a week or two and have to have made arrangements with someone else to shovel the sidewalk for them if an event that they can't predict occurs while they're away.

I don't feel like this is an easy problem to just fine your way out of, and doing so is pretty much asking for some news stories with terrible optics for the city when it turns out that a bunch of the people who didn't shovel for a week or two were in unexpectedly in the hospital or dealing with some true emergency that came up.

It's one thing when it's a few small fines, but the kind of fines that would actually get a big landlord to care are also the kind that will be financially ruinous to some average person.
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The City of Somerville has had a two street pilot program for enhanced snow clearing enforcement and municipal snow clearing in the case of non-compliance since 2021.
For the program, the City will
  1. increase enforcement of existing sidewalk snow removal rules, which can include issuing fines when sidewalks are not shoveled properly or on time;
  2. clear more snow from bus stops, ramps, and other pedestrian features, and
  3. clear snow from sidewalks not shoveled by property owners on time.
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The problem is, they abandoned points 2 and 3 of this program at some point in time. I spoke with the new administration about this and Jesse Moos (former head of infrastructure) claimed they were sued too many times by commercial landlords fighting the fines, and the municipal shoveling incentivized non-compliance. I don't know if I actually believe that, or if DPW just doesn't have the manpower to clear the sidewalks even with the fines.
 
The lawsuit point is fascinating. I was wondering if Quincy was leaving itself open to ADA lawsuits by not requiring residents to shovel. Mind blowing that the suits are going in the opposite direction.
 
www.eagletribune.com

Fire closes Lawrence's Central bridge indefinitely

LAWRENCE — The Central bridge, one of three major bridges in the city, is closed until further notice after an early morning fire broke out Tuesday under the bridge.
www.eagletribune.com www.eagletribune.com
Local and state officials inspected the bridge Tuesday after the fire. State officials will be conducting a full evaluation of the bridge’s structural integrity, said Lawrence Police Chief Maurice Aguiler.
The bridge was closed to traffic after a 2 a.m. fire under the bridge. The fire was brought under control several hours later, according to Lawrence Fire Department reports.
The bridge, officially named after World War I hero Joseph W. Casey, connects North Lawrence's Amesbury Street to Parker Street in South Lawrence.
At 2 a.m., Lawrence fire alarm got a call reporting the "Central bridge was on fire." Firefighters said there was immediate concern about fire in a known homeless encampment under the bridge and additional firefighting assets were requested.
With the assistance of public works employees, large amounts of debris were removed from under the bridge and firefighters overhauled the area. The fire was under control by about 5:30 a.m.
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KCasiglio said:
mass.streetsblog.org

MassDOT Awards $6.6 Million For Municipal 'Complete Streets' Projects - Streetsblog Massachusetts

The Massachusetts Department of Transportation will award $6.6 million to safety projecs in 15 cities and towns in the latest round of its Complete Streets Funding Program, a grant program that funds bike and pedestrian improvements in municipal public works projects. MassDOT defines “complete...
mass.streetsblog.org mass.streetsblog.org
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Nice: https://lordpondplaza.wordpress.com/
 
millerm277 said:
Montreal does a great job, and yes it's municipal.

Fundamentally I think it's not something that makes much sense to devolve to landowners. Especially in a city where the city builds, designs, and maintains the sidewalks in every other sense.

100,000 random people are never going to do a good or remotely consistent job at snow removal.

---------

It's also a difficult obligation to keep up with - plenty of the city is still SFH, too.

Seems problematic that a homeowner has to somehow know it's going to snow before they leave for a vacation/work trip for a week or two and have to have made arrangements with someone else to shovel the sidewalk for them if an event that they can't predict occurs while they're away.

I don't feel like this is an easy problem to just fine your way out of, and doing so is pretty much asking for some news stories with terrible optics for the city when it turns out that a bunch of the people who didn't shovel for a week or two were in unexpectedly in the hospital or dealing with some true emergency that came up.

It's one thing when it's a few small fines, but the kind of fines that would actually get a big landlord to care are also the kind that will be financially ruinous to some average person.
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Could the city make it based on density? Obviously the more dense, the more pedestrians, and so it is more of a problem when a downtown area or busy street is blocked vs some side street.
 
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