Anyone know about private ways?

[glitterbec.livejournal.com]

I live on a private way in the Davis Square area & am looking for some answers about plowing. My street is a bit of a hill & the ice makes it impossible for my little car to get to my driveway...forcing me to take up a street parking spot that someone else could have.

Do private ways ever get plowed?

I tried finding answers on the Somerville website, but found nothing. Thanks for any information!

Comments

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

I would suspect that the concept of a "private way" means that it's not maintained by the city or town. You and the other residents of the street would have to get together and hire a plowing company.

[srakkt.livejournal.com]

There may indeed be a neighborhod association or some similar group that arranges such things. As bikergeek points out, a private way usually means that the roadway is not maintained by the city.

[ifotismeni]

i live on a private way as well. you guys need to band together and hire a guy to plow (split the bill between the households). the city won't plow.

[derekp.livejournal.com]

Conversely you could ban together and petition the city to become a public way. I don't see any advantages in being private.

[ifotismeni]

well, we have private assigned parking spaces for one thing, which means i have a guaranteed parking spot on the street and can tow if anyone else parks there. we still get trash pickup, so aside from hiring a private guy to plow our street, the parking situation is a definite advantage.

[ron_newman]

One advantage: you manage your own parking. Only residents of your street (or approved guests) can park there, and you can tow away anyone else.

[chumbolly.livejournal.com]

One disadvantage: repaving, when the time comes.

Most private ways will be subject to an easement agreement amongst the abutters that would be in the chain of title to your property. If you got title insurance when you bought, to find the easement agreement, look on Schedule B to the policy which will contain the "exceptions to title." It should list the easement as an exception. Then take the "book and page" reference and look it up at cambridgedeeds.com using that reference. You'll be able to pull up the whole easement document online, presuming it's not ancient. If done well, that agreement will address how issues such as plowing and other types of maintenance are to be handled, and then you'll know what to do. Easy-squeezy!

[firstfrost.livejournal.com]

I've lived on and near private ways in Somerville that got plowed, and ones that didn't. The ones that look like streets seem more likely to; the ones that look like extra-large driveways less likely. This isn't helpful, I realize, but it's always puzzled me a little. Not enough to actually want to ask the city "Hey, why do you plow street X?" in case the answer is "Good point, we'll stop doing that."

[kvarko.livejournal.com]

I dunno about Somerville, but some towns are interested in plowing private ways because the town is still responsible for emergency services to the houses there (and the primary reason for plowing is for emergency vehicles to get around). I guess if the private way is small enough that it just looks like a driveway, then the city might feel that emergency vehicles can get close enough.

THANKS!

[glitterbec.livejournal.com]

I appreciate all the answers. And yes, our private way is one of those that just looks like a large driveway (there are only 6 house on it, 2 of which have front doors on the main road that we run into).

The city like to treat our street like a driveway too...not ticketing cars parked right by the intersection, which makes leaving tricky.

One of the biggest problems we (my house) has is that we are the only renters on the street, everyone else owned & I think has been here awhile. We were a bit surprised that they hadn't already organized a plowing service.