New snow shovelling policy

[pjmorgan.livejournal.com]

I'm going to pick a fight in a passive aggressive way, if that is possible.

So Somerville fines if you shovel snow into the street??!!!
http://www.wickedlocal.com/somerville/news/x1689216222/Fines-set-for-Somervilles-non-shovelers

This is bogus on so many ways.

First of all, during the last storm, right after I shoveled my sidewalk and "shoveled" snow onto my sidewalk. Not just into my driveway (which I've come to expect). Can I fine the city for that?

So is this defined as into the middle of the street, or along the edges? Sometimes you have to shovel just a little bit into the first couple feet of the street. If someone shovels out their car, will that trigger it?

In general, I find it annoying that my real estate taxes go to clearing the roads (which I don't even use since I'm doing my part by not driving) so I guess I have a chip on my shoulder.

And hopefully I just don't understand the regulation. What is the definition of shoveling into the street that they are going off of?

Comments

[infinitemorning.livejournal.com]

You don't use the roads? Really? You never use public transportation? Ride your bike? Have something shipped to you? Cross a street, perhaps?

Whether you drive or not -- I don't -- the roads are pretty damn essential to our infrastructure. And it's not just about cars, either: roads have been essential to infrastructure since, hell, the days of ancient Rome. These days, we all chip in a bit to pay for them. I'm okay with it, personally.

(That said, snow plows throwing snow back on the sidewalk do annoy the hell out of me.)

More on the list:

[srakkt.livejournal.com]

* expect the fire truck to come to your home if it is in flames.
* expect an ambulance to come in the case of an emergency.

Re: More on the list:

[pjmorgan.livejournal.com]

Sure, totally agreed, but the % of the cost that goes to emergency vehicles is small. The % of general funds going to pay for the roads should be correspondingly small.

Re: More on the list:

[srakkt.livejournal.com]

Think it through.

The emergency vehicles cannot A) predict where they are going to be needed or B) use only some "correspondingly small" percentage-clear road to arrive at your home from their garage.

In other words, in order for the emergency response function of local government to be met when there is snow on the ground, all of the roads must be kept reasonably clear.

The amount of general funds required to do so is independent of the number of vehicles using the roads, and instead is dependent upon the amount and type of snowfall.

Let's - as a thought experiment - imagine a world wherein it is as you say: the "percentage share" of roadway use engaged by emergency vehicles is calculated, and that percentage of the cost of road clearing is then borne by the city, and no more.

Some questions about that world:

* Who removes the rest of the snow? As has been previously noted, having only some roads made only partially clear fails to be a useful state for emergency response. In order to clear those roads in a timely fashion requires human intervention - waiting for it to melt is not an acceptable answer.

* How much time does it take to remove the rest of the snow?

Making a couple of assumptions - namely that the snow is removed in a timely fashion by private plow-owners.

* Should those individuals be compensated for their time? For their fuel? For vehicle upkeep?

* Where does *that* money come from?

Now, I'm not suggesting that there exists no other model for the solution of the road plowing problem, but I'm curious to know what you actually have in mind. The "pay for the share of traffic" argument is pretty flawed, and I can't imagine that you actually meant that seriously.

While I think it's lame to shovel snow into the road...

[turil.livejournal.com]

The excuse of emergency vehicles needing to use the road is also lame, because in snowy parts of the world like New England, they should be prepared for snow on the roads by having vehicles that can easily travel in the snow. It's pretty pathetic that we have Mars rovers wandering all over another planet with NO ROADS AT ALL (oh, my god!!!), but our emergency vehicles have these ridiculous slick tires that have no traction whatsoever.

Re: While I think it's lame to shovel snow into the road...

[srakkt.livejournal.com]

And you're back outside of that pesky 'reality' constraint that the rest of us all have to deal with. I was wondering how long it'd take you.

Re: While I think it's lame to shovel snow into the road...

[pierceheart.livejournal.com]

it's someone who has never seen a HMMWV have snowchains.

Re: While I think it's lame to shovel snow into the road...

[turil.livejournal.com]

The future is always a fantasy just waiting to become reality. If you don't plan for a better future, why bother doing anything?

Re: While I think it's lame to shovel snow into the road...

[pierceheart.livejournal.com]

This is all well and good, until it's your life hanging in the balance waiting on an emergency vehicle.

Right now, not in some sparkly happy future where no private citizen has a car, and emergency vehicles in the us are equipped like armored vehicles.

Re: While I think it's lame to shovel snow into the road...

[turil.livejournal.com]

"This is all well and good, until it's your life hanging in the balance waiting on an emergency vehicle."

Precisely my point. I'm willing to invest some of my time and energy trying to take care of the people who do want to have emergency vehicles come to their rescue even when the streets aren't all pristine.

And I imagine that the city, with it's lust for big machines, would actually love to have some real ATV type emergency vehicles like they do in places like Vermont.

Re: While I think it's lame to shovel snow into the road...

[zaarwin-devolve.livejournal.com]

And I imagine that the city, with it's lust for big machines, would actually love to have some real ATV type emergency vehicles like they do in places like Vermont.

I'm oh so sure that the people whose cars end up buried in the snow kicked up by said ATV-type vehicles will just shrug their shoulders. (Now, instead of shovelers having space holders, they'll have portable walls!) Same for when the vehicles go flying around corners in neighborhoods with really tight streets, lose control and cause damage.

Vermont may have some ATV-style rescue vehicles but they also have far fewer people spread out over a far larger area than are found in the Boston metro area. They can get away with a lot of things that can't be done around here. Also, some people in VT are in really remote areas that flat-out require such enhanced vehicles. Sorry, but snow doesn't demand the same solution in every case.

When hovercars and hoverboots become ubiquitous, I'll certainly consider leaving Boston's streets untouched. Until then, I'll pay a few extra bucks to the city and state to make sure I can get to the hospital in less than three hours.

[pjmorgan.livejournal.com]

Well this is getting off track, but no I don't. At the margin you might say I do, but I still don't. If I have something delivered to me, I'm not using the road, the delivery vehicle is. They should pay for the cost and bundle it in with the cost of delivery.

The real point here is not winning an argument over whether I benefit at all from the existence of any roads at all, but that we have a huge problem when we tax everyone on a fixed cost to pay for the roads and them give them away as a free good. This increases demand for automobile travel, because each additional trip costs very little. The cost of roads (which say 95% benefits automobile travel) should vary with use (and simultaneously everyone's real estate, state and federal taxes should go down since the government should not be paying for roads out of tax revenue). So in my case on the rare times I do use the roads to have something delivered, I'll pay so I'll be forced to make a choice on whether its worth incurring a financial (and indirectly environmental) versus walking to the store. The folks who drive to the grocery store will have alot more of those decisions to make.

This is the only fair way to pay for this service and its more effective in helping the environment that relying on people to limit their car use out of the goodness of their hearts. If we did this, we'd see a massive shift towards other means of transportation. There'd probably be fewer roads, we could have bigger front yards (for many properties our front yards were taken away in the 1900s to widen roads, 28 might go away, etc

[srakkt.livejournal.com]

You have now demonstrated that your opinion is provably incorrect and based upon predicates which do not accurately reflect reality.

You are advised to examine the world in which you live and reformulate.

[prunesnprisms.livejournal.com]

you win the internet, regularly.

[zaarwin-devolve.livejournal.com]

Ummm, sorry, but this is ridiculous. It's libertarianism run amok, no different than people whining about paying for schools despite having no kids.

How exactly is this supposed to be enforced?

-Toll booths and plate-reading cameras at every street corner, similar to London's congestion zone? So much for the scheme being cheap, or non-invasive, or anything any sane person would support, especially outside metro areas.
-Toll booths at every state border crossing, where they make note of your odometer? What if I live in the boonies and mostly drive off-road, or mostly drive on the Turnpike (oops, I'm essentially getting taxed twice!)?
-Visits from the It's-the-Principle-of-the-Matter Fairy? We might as well slap pay meters on public water fountains too. I'm tired of no-good kids wasting my hard-earned tax dollars just because they don't feel like buying an overpriced bottle of water from the 7-11!
-Would this apply to out-of-state drivers too? So much for people visiting Grandma when she doesn't live right next to a T stop or the state border, or a cool art museum that happens to be in the middle of nowhere, or whatever.

Are "free" roads absolutely, positively fair in the sense of a bunch of philosophers getting together and circle jerking over the definition of "fair"? Probably not. Are they the next best thing? You bet.

[squirrelitude]

You never leave the house for work, groceries, voting, medical appointments, clothes (etc.) shopping, visiting friends, or jury duty?

Or do you have a private helicopter?

[prunesnprisms.livejournal.com]

I wonder how the Romans dealt with snow.

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

By not getting a whole lot of it in Rome, I imagine. But to be less snarky and look at more outlying parts of empire -- well, hm, "Etsi mons Cevenna, qui Arvernos ab Helviis discludit, durissimo tempore anni altissima nive iter impediebat, tamen discussa nive sex in altitudinem pedum atque ita viis patefactis summo militum sudore ad fines Arvernorum pervenit." from Gallic Wars 7.8 (in essense, "when Caesar's men hit 6 feet of snow they shoveled with maximum badassery," but they are unspecific about technology). But that's the midst of a military campaign where you would expect that sort of thing; I don't know off the top of my head where I would look for a cite on how they handled the everyday business of keeping their road network functional in winter...A cursory search of Perseus for some forms of nix,nivis does not suggest an obvious passage to mine.

[talonvaki.livejournal.com]

In my experience, the roads are cleared fairly well.
Sidewalks, not so much.

It's pretty bad when you can't walk on Summer Street for most of the winter because the sidewalks are more unshoveled than they are shoveled.