Please Deice Your Sidewalk

[derekp.livejournal.com]

We're a few days removed from the first winter storm of the year, and yet many stretches of sidewalk in and around Davis Square are still covered in ice. Simpson Ave seems particularly bad as you get towards the Broadway end of the street and Cutter was no Picnic last night either. I can only imagine the folks who live there are renters, as I would think owner residents would not want to risk the liability. One trip to Home Depot or Tags and a few seconds tossing a small amount of rock salt on the ground will fix this. Please everyone do their part to keep the sidewalks in our neighborhood safe all winter.

Is there recourse for pedestrians in Somerville when folks do not clear the sidewalk or does it simply become a legal issue if/when someone slips and falls? I'd like to see the city stepping up to clear bad areas, perhaps citing landlords and residents who repeatedly fail to keep the sidewalk safe.

Comments

[nonnihil.livejournal.com]

I used to live in Arlington, and I have to say they did it better -- the cops' zeal in handing out tickets for unshoveled sidewalks was legendary. Now that I'm in Somerville (and pushing a stroller a lot of the time) I have to say that I'm constantly appalled at how much ice people seem to get away with leaving on their sidewalks.

[gosling.livejournal.com]

Yeah, everyone I know who has tried using a stroller in winter has had a really hard time, and trying to get around in a wheelchair is virtually impossible in a lot of neighborhoods for most of the winter. (My son, now almost three, was born in January; we rapidly discovered that if we wanted to go anywhere at all with him on foot, we pretty much had to use a Baby Bjorn or some similar infant carrying device. The sidewalks were just impassible for wheeled vehicles of any kind.) I'm always afraid when my elderly parents come to visit me that they will slip on the ice, and I worry about some of my older neighbors too.

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

Our (my and nonnihil's) baby is a January kid, too :). It was actually OK last January because by the time I'd recovered enough from the C-section to actually *want* to take walks, and she was old enough to get bored if we didn't, there wasn't much snow ;). But this winter is going to be tough; she's getting awfully heavy for a Bjorn..

[gosling.livejournal.com]

Around age one, facing icy conditions and a kid rapidly outgrowing our Bjorn and anything similar, I actually switched to using a sling (in the hip carry) and my husband started using a baby backpack. (Now we use a sling pretty much exclusively, because 95% of the time our almost three year old wants to walk. This way we still have something to carry him with besides our unassisted arms if he does get really tired, but we don't have all the hassles of a stroller that is unlikely to actually be used most of the time.)