February vacation is over, school returns Monday. How does your village look?
How are the streets, sidewalks and potholes in your village
by Greg Reibman | Feb 22, 2015 | Newton | 24 comments
Crazy Divers: Men be like...
drivers man be like
February vacation is over, school returns Monday. How does your village look?
Crazy Divers: Men be like...
drivers man be like
To walk from my house on Fuller down Chestnut Street to Beacon to Waban Center is to take ones life in ones hands.
Beacon Street is OK, ( sidewalks clear on one side or the other ), but Chestnut is not. Walking in the Street is best facing oncoming traffic. That way if you are hit you will at least have seen him coming. I’ve had to climb onto the snow bank a few times .
So all I have heard is how the schools and streets around them were being worked on to get ready for today.
I am just wondering if Public Works was working on Schools in Newton or another community.
This morning – the Crossing Guard at Waltham/Albermarle will be lucky if she doesnt get hit by a car as she is stuck walking in the middle of the street to try to cross kids across the 2 Albermarle Intersections, Linwood which is a HUGE drop off street for Day Parents is barely passable for 2 cars – and forget about the kids running across the street, and Horace Mann still has snow on the street at Watertown Street where many parents drop off.
Maybe the Mayor or the BOA should go for a driving tour with the Public Works director and have them point out what they actually did last week.
This is ridiculous. Especially this weekend which was mild and ALOT of snow could have been removed.
What is it going to take Mayor Warren – A child getting killed on their way or home from school for you to get out of your office and seeing what a terrible job has been done on the streets? Maybe you live too close to your job and dont get out to the rest of the city to see what the streets look like. But I am sure your Police Escort would be happy to drive you around town so you can then go and take a look and then hopefully have a serious conversation with Public Works.
I took a 3 mile walk yesterday (Sunday). I’d say 80% of homes have shoveled their sidewalks. Less than 50% of city owned property has had sidewalks shoveled.
The most dangerous spot was crossing Route 9 on Parker Street, where nothing has been shoveled and there is no alternative to walking in the street. Pedestrian crossing lights were added there last summer at considerable expense, but they are completely unusable due to piles of snow.
By the way, I reported the Route 9/Parker Street bridge situation in my previous post to 311 five days ago. The response I got was “Not on city plow list – Resident must clear”. I have made six 311 reports this year and not one has been addressed.
@Mark – I’d call the Mayor’s office on that one. I’ve found in the past that when his office is contacted directly (I emailed him) it can expedite things quite noticeably.
Yesterday morning we were out shoveling trying to find the storm drains (since the plows don’t plow near the curbs – in Wayland you can see curbs). We found one and got it free of ice. The other one was BURIED UNDER 8 feet of snow. As we were shoveling and hoping (in two inches of water in a 20 foot long puddle), a city plow drove by . . .we flagged it down, and asked if the guy could plow that little area.
The snowplow driver told us to call the city. We reminded him that he did work for the city, and it would take 30 seconds. He relunctantly plowed it (took him 10 seconds) and the giant puddle disappeared (and not into our basement).
I was out delivering girl scout cookies, and basically couldn’t let my daughter out of the car for fear of her getting hit. . . . I put my hazzards out, jumped out of the car, rang the bell, and ran back to the car and hoping no cars would be on the street.
I don’t know how Wayland has such wide streets – yes I do. They plow to pavement and then the WIDTH of the streets.
I have NO idea about the schools. This is NOT how to plow.
Yesterday I went for a walk with a friend from Brookline who was shocked at the state of our streets compared to Brookline (though she also said it was worse in parts of Cambridge).
@Mark – the Parker St. bridge over Route 9 belongs to the state (MassDOT), which of course has nothing but contempt for pedestrians. They’ll plow the sidewalks there when they get around to plowing the sidewalks on the rest of Route 9 (i.e. sometime in July).
It would be nice if the city were to acknowledge this reality and have the sidewalk plower keep its plow down when it crosses Route 9.
The state/city issue applies a lot of places- including over the Pike in Newton Corner, where a few years back the city was able to come to some sort of accommodation and get the Washington/Centre St sidewalks across the bridges at least partly cleared. Not sure of their current state, but after the first blizzard t least one side did get cleared.
Also- as melting occurred yesterday, I did notice lots of potholes everywhere- on Centre between Mill St and Newton Corner, definitely. I suspect we’ll see a lot more of that problem as the snow subsides
Well, all I can say is I knew this would happen. I live near the Lincoln Eliot school and the streets in this neighborhood (Capital St and Washburn St) are a disgrace. Cars parked all along these streets today making it impossible to safely drive down the street. There is NO WAY a fire truck would ever be able to maneuver down these streets if there was a fire or medical emergency. Cars were parked right up to the edge of the driveways making it extremely difficult to either pull out or into property. The fact that the streets were never plowed to the curb is a major reason for this mess. All I’ve heard is how the DPW is out there working to clean areas up. I have seen none of them in this area with the exception of a crew cleaning the sidewalks at the school. Every day and night in Waltham, their DPW crews are out knocking back snowbanks, widening streets and hauling snow away. Every day. Every night. I know this because I get the Twitter feed from Waltham with all the street closures and cleaning schedule. It is disgraceful that the City of Newton can’t get their crews out doing the work until the streets are SAFE.
@Michael, @Mark Dionne, for the record, the west side of Parker crossing Route 9 is on the city plowing list regardless of who owns the bridge.
DPW is out on Madison in Newtonville, cutting back the snow berms and widening the travel lane. We were put on the list for widening about a week ago.
I was so happy abut it I took a picture. I’ll post it if I can figure out how.
Hope it is contagious!
Newtonville village center (Walnut and Washington) is getting the tractor treatment this morning. That area is slowly getting widened out. No photo, sorry, but Walnut was cleared out by the shops, and there was a cruiser and tractor out on Washington at the corner.
Dropped my son off at North this morning- Cabot is still less than ideal, but if they are working on Madison then it sounds like that whole area is getting a workover today.
Carry, saw that you posted on Facebook- -link here should be viewable by all:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10203771712396684&set=o.151554118282736&type=1&theater¬if_t=wall
Austin Street from W. Newton to Newtonville is still a disaster. It’s narrow to begin with and it’s not plowed to the curb on either side, so there a stretches where only one car can pass at a time. Yesterday afternoon an oil truck was making a delivery in one such spot, and disaster ensued.
Alas, Madison was not widened all the way along its length. They skipped where cars were parked, and also the tallest and biggest snow piles at the end of driveways (ours!). Lots of snow that was knocked onto the street remains there. I hope that the plows that run with tonight’s snow can move that, too.
I saw on the news that Newton City Hall has a new application that you can install on your iPhone and you can report pot holes in Newton directly to the public works dept. I guess the way it works is that when you see a pothole you pull over and press a button on your phone and it tracks your exact location and the location of the pothole! Pretty high tech!!!
Too bad there is no place to pull over!
They showcased Washington Street on the television segment. It looked like a nifty little “ap” for the Iphone. I wonder what other aps that City Hall might be coming out with in the future? They are getting very high tech!!!
The city of Boston has a much cooler way to crowd source this info.
What does the city of boston do Adam?
This Ken Burns send up isn’t Newton related but is too good not to share.
I would think that the price of gas being so low this year would have been a big benefit to the City of Newton’s snow plowing budget? It must have been an unexpected windfall for them. Maybe they could buy a couple more of those little yellow snow machines with the savings?
@Alison Haran – I’d guess that gas is a relatively small part of the snow budget … though every bit helps, especially this winter.