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How are the streets and sidewalks in your village?
by village14 | Jan 22, 2019 | Newton, streets and sidewalks, weather | 18 comments
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I visited City Hall around 1pm today. A poor snow removal effort made parking difficult and left pedestrians to navigate their way through very slippery conditions. I’ve seen a better snow clearing effort around City Hall after much larger storms.
I think they are terrible.
Yes, I understand the nature of the storm and how difficult it was turning from snow to rain to sleet to ice, etc.
My biggest complaint is that for some unknown reason, the plows do not plow to the curb. They simply plow to “keep the road open”. So when this happens and we get a deep freeze, we are stuck with exceptionally narrow streets with snowbanks that are impossible to move or easily get around.
If the plows would start by plowing to the curb, the streets would be wider and safer and the storm drains would be exposed allowing for puddles to drain. There are sections of Washington Street where almost a complete lane of travel is lost because they did not plow to the curb.
Why did the post office not have to move their trucks off of Washington Street in Newtonville? It’s a mess in that area.
Many side streets are a sheet of ice and there has not been any sand or salt laid down to help with melting and traction.
This is New England and this is not our first snow storm. The City should be better prepared (it’s not like this wasn’t in the forecast) and should plow to the curb to start with rather than go back later and try to widen the streets.
I won’t even begin to address sidewalks….
I broke an axle hitting the island on charlesbank road Sunday am 8:30 am. The responding officer, who was very nice, called for sand and salt. There wasn’t any on that hill. I was going 15 mph maybe less. But once the car started to slide down that small hill there was no stopping it. I wasn’t injured and no one else was involved. If I had been going just 5 mph faster it would have been 100 times worse.
Our small street was not plowed to the curb, which meant that I had to dig and find the storm drains, which I did, because had I not, tomorrow, our street would be flooding. I find it very upsetting that some streets get curb to curb and others don’t. If we don’t create wide streets for the first storm, we learned that in 2015 the streets just get too narrow. And the residents can’t go finding storm drains for every storm.
Drove near Newton South today and Brandeis rd near Greenwood is bad because it was not plowed to the curb. Traveling towards the hs from Greenwood people were driving on the edge of the road because their was not enough room with the parked cars and the other land of traffic. There was so much opportunity for those cars to slide off the snow on the edges and loose control. Greenwood was bumper to bumper for quite a distance due to the back up caused by this. With the amount of traffic going through there and the teenage drivers it is a recipe for disaster. The sidewalks are pretty bad. When driving in the morning I noticed a lot of unshoveled areas.
Pretty bad. Our road is definitely slippery, however they did plow curb to curb which they usually don’t do. Sidewalks are worse, including ours. We were gone over the weekend and came home to rock hard snow on our sidewalk and we couldn’t really get through it with a shovel. I’m a stickler for shoveling, so it’s really frustrating that we couldn’t do a good job.
I can also say I live on a school route and we never saw a sidewalk plow.
This was probably a good thing since they generally make a huge mess
after we’ve spent so much time making it look totally clear.
Mayor Fuller assured me today that clearing storm drains in anticipation of a warm up and rain has been the DPW’s top priority today.
Well maybe so, but as walked home from the T none of the storm drains on my block were cleared. Why wouldn’t they just clear them on the first pass/day given the forecast?
Weren’t cleared!
Greg, would have been more helpful for the plows to not have covered them up in the first place and plowing curb to curb on every street. I find it hard to believe that it was curb to curb based on my experience yesterday driving my kid to Newton South. And going back after it has iced up takes more time and energy. I hope the next storm, the plow drivers follow the curb to curb rule on the first try. Because now they are getting paid double to plow the same thing that could have been done earlier.
The Newton South area was really bad according to many parents in the Newton Parents Facebook Group. Many parents reported that paid parking spots had mounds of snow in them forcing faculty and kids to park on the street, making a snow covered narrowed road even worse. According to the parents the Tab didn’t want to cover a story about this. Do we need to wait for a student to get hurt before it gets noticed by the newspaper and the mayor’s office?
The city’s effort was at best incomplete. They did a good job the first day, but a poor one afterwards. The nature of the storm (snow-sleet-ice) did make the roads and sidewalks worse. But the city also appears to have let its timing (holiday weekend – fewer cars) and forecast (much milder temps now) dictate its lack of followup, to the satisfaction of very few.
The plowing in town seems extremely disorganized and haphazard at best. Who does most of the plowing in the town is it town employees or contractors? Who’s in charge of clearing town owned sidewalks? The West Newton town parking lot is plowed, but they plowed the snow into the sidewalk and made no effort to clear it (not that they ever do). I honestly may go snowblow it myself the next storm I’m pretty tired having to walk in the street because it never gets cleared.
I live close to the West Newton Center and throughout the storm there were front end loaders and skid steers driving back and forth, but most often their plows/buckets weren’t down. They went by frequently but I have no idea where they were going.
Also why aren’t all lanes of Washington Street cleared? The intersections of both Washington and Cherry and Washington and Highland are missing a turning lane which causes significant backups in the morning. This was one six inch storm, why is the town incapable of clearing all lanes of a major road?
@kyle welcome to the privatization of what were once public goods. Instead of funding our own DPW, the city competes on the open market for contractors, who also do commercial lots, and the lowest bidder is going to get the worse service.
‘Tis the fashion of the times.
The public sidewalks in Newton Center were appalling. I went out Sunday night to get some food, and the sidewalk on Langley Rd from Union St to Beacon st was untouched. I walked on the crunchy snow/ice, as walking in the street there is a death sentence. I live on a dead end road near Newton center, and the plows never cleared the snow from the main road that got dumped by plows at the end of my dead end road. Needless to say, it was a frozen mess by Sunday night, and still is a large hump to get your car over when you leave or enter the street. This is my first winter in Newton, and so far, I am unimpressed.
Nonantum, as usual, is a complete disaster.
I’m in Upper Falls. Since moving here 2 years ago for work, I’ve slipped on ice at least once every year per snow storm walking on the sidewalks. I’ve been extra cautious this year to avoid slipping but I definitely feel unstable when attempting to walk around the area. Conditions this year on sidewalks have not noticeably improved.