Why did Somerville fail utterly to handle thie storm properly?

[feoh.livejournal.com]

Why was the snow removal process botched so horribly that plows weren't out at all on Sunday and many side streets weren't plowed at all until last night?

The result has been a nightmare. I just spent an hour and a half riding a bus to work that usually takes 10 minutes or maybe 20 on a bad day or of it rains. Cars are forced to crawl along, traffic backs up. The entire city becomes some sort of giant constipated nightmare vision from hell with noone getting anywhere and everyone wishing they were anywhere else but trapped in the bus/car they've been in way too long.

On top of this, while many people do a good job, a startling number of people and even businesses utterly fail to shovel their sidewalks.

What's up with that? I watched an elderly lady take a nose dive into a pile of muddy snow this morning because the Kwik Mart on Highland Ave barely shoveled at all (There's a narrow trench not even big enough to solidly put your foot down, much less walk normally).

I just don't get it. This is not rocket science. We live in New England and we get snow on a regular basis. The fact that we've been spoiled the last few years by wimpy winters shouldn't cause us to forget how to deal with the weather.

Grumph. Anyway, pardon my rant but it just seems too far out of whack not to speak up.

Comments

[dmaze]

It hasn't seemed that terrible to me. I wound up walking between Davis and Teele Squares along Holland Ave. Sunday night and the sidewalks were pretty passable. I was surprised that there was basically no road maintenance being done on Saturday (and disbelieve it was Boston's city manager's fault). It looked like most of the streets were at least a little plowed, and you could actually see lots of asphalt in my neighborhood (Ten Hills) this morning.

The bus system has seemed exceptionally screwed this week, though. The orange line on Monday was a disaster; it seemed like there were more riders than usual but they hadn't added trains to compensate. Busses were taking forever to show up, and forever to get anywhere; at least the bus drivers seemed competent, but that's not enough to make up for the rest of the city forgetting how to drive.

[enochs-fable.livejournal.com]

I was surprised that there was basically no road maintenance being done on Saturday (and disbelieve it was Boston's city manager's fault).

My bad, it was the public works director. (http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/343/metro/Boston_aide_says_he_misjudged_storm+.shtml)

"Boston's longtime public works director acknowledged yesterday that he at first vastly underestimated the weekend snowfall and deployed less than half of his snow removal equipment on city streets, as the full brunt of the storm struck Saturday morning."

[marlatiara.livejournal.com]

"I wound up walking between Davis and Teele Squares along Holland Ave."

There's a stretch along that way (on the right, near the playground) that still has several inches of mushy snow on it. Nothing has been shoveled. I gingerly made my way through yesterday but it was difficult and I was glad I was wearing boots.