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Gridlock City
By adamg on Fri, 02/06/2015 - 1:30pm
With many Boston roads still not fully plowed, traffic across the city continues to be tied up in knots, as Alison Kenney shows us with her dashboard-eye view of Charles Circle around 12:45 p.m.
To try to alleviate the mess, members of the local constabulary are hitting their ticket books hard, writing up people for parking more than a foot away from the curb on the streets too numerous to mention where the city never did get around to plowing all the way to the curb, leaving frustrated shoppers and diners to take up actual travel lanes to park, and leaving even more frustrated through drivers stewing in something that was a lot easier to solve when it was just a simple puzzle game:
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Comments
Critical Mass Drive
Look at that - illegally blocking (corking) intersections, running red lights, jamming the roadways.
Somebody should do something about these terrorist scofflaws!
Mayor said they would enforce
On the radio with Dan Rea earlier this week, Mayor Walsh stated that the police would begin to give tickets for "blocking the box." They need to advertise this on billboards and invite the press to watch give out tickets. That will get people's attention.
HAHAHAHA
Thats cute but I'll believe it when I see it. Cars are blocking the box at intersections when there is zero snow on the ground, yet nothing is done.
Hmm..
I was just talking to the hubby the other night that with all the snow impeding traffic flow, including blocking a driver's vision, especially pulling out from side streets and making the roadways pretty dangerous all around, the amount of car accidents that have happened since the beginning of the snow apocalypse seem to me, pretty low in number, so I guess all those "terrorist scofflaws" must be doing something right.
Did you miss the two posts about flipped cars this week?
Or are you just being willfully ignorant?
But sure, if people are breaking the law but aren't causing accidents, everything must be dandy, right?
Who cares?
The Mayor cleared out snow so Pats fan from New Hampshire could enjoy a parade!!
We need to ban driving until
We need to ban driving until motorists can prove that they are capable of following laws, like not blocking the box, parking legally, and only using their horn for an emergency. Im tired of these scofflaws running amok.
But more seriously, how many people are being put into danger by these activities? How many ambulances are stuck on their way to the hospital? Anyone who is blocking the passage of ambulances carrying patients should be jailed. There is no place in society for people who willingly place themselves in a public way and impede emergency vehicles.
Forget parking illegally, how
Forget parking illegally, how about not killing 33,000 people per year in the US alone?
Or 6 in Westchester The Other Day
1 in DC last month. You go with silly hyperbole, so will I.
6 in westchester?
They were killed by the actions of a driver.
I know that.
I was only responding to the incredible silly sentiment above.
And an incredibly dumb (or clueless) driver at that
Reports are that after the crossing gate hit her SUV, the woman got out to check for damage. Then when she saw the train approaching, she stood in the middle of the track and waved at it to stop.
But I'm sure some "ambulance chaser" type lawyer will try to figure a way to blame this on Metro-North.
And yes, I do feel very sorry for the victims and their families. Tragic and needless.
Exactly
The roads weren't built for them anyway!
Also for blocking the box, supposedly
https://twitter.com/NotifyBoston/status/563457262828945408
Emergency response times?
Has anyone looked into whether (or how badly) all this traffic is affecting average response time for police, fire, and ambulances?
The Blue-Red Connector To Charles Circle Is Badly Needed
"Foot from the curb"
Why doesn't the City plow the snow within a foot of the curb? Dot Ave, L Street, Washington Street are so choked with snow you are lucky to get within4' of the curb. This snow removal in Boston is a disgrace.
And rather than plow properly
And rather than plow properly, they're going to fine people for parking the only way they can. Your tax dollars at work.
Park illegally
Get a ticket. Not too hard to understand. Can't fit legally, go find a garage.
What we really need to do its get all these parked private cars off the public roads and don't let them back until the parking spaces are properly cleared.
Instead, we only have a parking ban long enough to get the main roads cleared. Then all the lemmings pile their little metal boxes back on the snow banks.
main roads cleared? where?
There are parts of Dot Ave. where two cars can't pass at the same time because there's still an absurd amount of snow in the street. This is on a designated snow artery, as "main" as a "main road" can be. Why do we even HAVE snow arteries and declared snow emergencies if the ostensible point of them isn't even followed?
12" - WHY NOT ENFORCED!
On many roads like Commonwealth Ave in Back Bay people don't shovel out spots -- they just park in the travel lane! Worse, as the snow piles up you now have people with parts of their car sticking out into the left travel lane.
Why is this allowed? Why is the 12" from the curb rule not enforced?! Why is parking so much more important then moving?
They could solve a majority of the traffic problems today if they just towed anyone parking more then 12" from the curb.
On Chestnut Hill Ave in
On Chestnut Hill Ave in Cleveland Circle, the snowbank probably extends 4 or 5 feet into the road. Since parking is banned during snow storms, there is not excuse for not plowing to the curb. I really don't understand why the plows don't clear the entire street. The stretch between Beacon and Commonwealth needs to support both cars and Greenline trains moving between B, C and D.
It's a mess!
Parking bans don't always
Parking bans don't always mean people abide by them.
On streets without parking
On streets without parking bans, there are car-shaped holes in the snow. This lets you park closer to the curb than on a parking-ban street where they don't plow the parking lane at all.
Snow Wins
The snow has volume. You can either transport it elsewhere or you can store it on the sidewalk or street until it melts. Plowing the the curb isn't an option if it would put the sidewalk under 6' of snow.
Given these constraints the sidewalk and road should (and are) plowed into the parking lane. Mother nature needs to park for a while and she's got a space saver.
Also a problem in Arlington!
Where police are not ticketing and towing the town hall employees and others parked on Mass Ave, reducing it to one lane each way. Instead, there are just no parking signs for tonight/tomorrow when front loaders and dump trucks will continue snow removal operations.
Roads near schools are now mostly one way at a time as parents park and wait outside schools for their kids to be let out (since Arlington doesn't use school buses so much).
Get Thee Behind Me
Mass Ave is only one lane each way there. Just because it is a wide lane does not mean you should be driving side by side. Line astern is the formation the admiral has ordered, not line abreast.
Obsolete information, its 4 lanes
Mass Ave was striped as four lanes in that location a few months ago. Mind you, this area is in the voting precinct (8) that most wanted 3 lanes and bike lanes on Mass Ave in east Arlington, yet like having 4 lanes and no bike lanes in their own neighborhood.
Four lanes are striped on Mass Ave from Rt. 60 (Pleasant/Mystic) west to Bartlett Ave. (Whole Foods).
Let's continue blaming the symptom, not the disease.
If the city declares a snow emergency parking ban and most people abide by that and still the plows drivers plow as if there are hundreds of cars parked on the street, then perhaps the city ought to withhold payment to the plow companies until the plows come by and finish the job. Cases in point are Dartmouth and Exeter between Comm Ave and Beacon. Not only did the city pay for shabby plowing, unless it's cleaned up now, it continues to lose money from meters as well as fines from scofflaws.
Of course the traffic isn't being helped by the absolute travesty of the T's mechanical and operational failures. We can blame legislator's from central and western parts of the states for voting against funding. But they don't care, they get more snow than we usually do. And they don't care that it took me over an hour to get from Brighton to VA hospital in JP making me late for my appointment.
Snow would be the disease!
and just where is all this claimed global warming to cure the disease?
You're soaking in it
More extreme weather - like massive snowstorms that have been increasing in the last 20 years - ARE a consequence of climate change!
Notice how we have been keeping stats for over a century? Now, notice that 5 of the top 10 snowstorm totals are from the last 20 years, with two more in the last 40 and all in the last 60?
If you had been paying attention to the transparent science, rather than sticking your head in a Faux hole, you would know that.
(/sigh)
You're soaking in it
sorry couldn't resist..
But how can it be WARMING if
But how can it be WARMING if it's SNOWING?! Boy, those scientists sure are dumb. I can't believe they haven't noticed that it still snows. You'd think a bunch of scientists would be smarter than that.
If the people in charge want
If the people in charge want less traffic, they have to make public transit work better. And when things go wrong, we deserve information about it.
For example, why has the Commuter Rail been suffering from hour-late trains, and widespread train cancellations, 4 days after the last storm? If there's a reasonable explanation, the T hasn't communicated it to the public. (And "snow" or "not enough funding" are not explanations at all.)
I heard rumors that 50% of Red Line trainsets weren't working on Tuesday, but that the vast majority of the broken trains weren't the old ones -- they were the 1990s-era Bombardiers. Why haven't the T's public affairs people talked about this, and why haven't the media written about it?
Lack of transparency
I'm sure the T has lots of data on route ridership and profit/loss for each, failure rates for each vehicle and part, vehicle types and models etc. etc. Repair times/costs for common fixes. Maintenance schedules and history for vehicles etc. All the sort of things we would expect when managing a commercial vehicle fleet and assets worth billions of dollars.
They just seem to do a poor job of making it publicly available beyond the federal transportation database. Protect the guilty?
Has anyone tried doing public record requests? What were the claimed fees for documents?
Stiff and consistent enforcement = no box blocking
San Diego is one city that strictly enforces this and the result is almost zero box blocking.
It's a hefty fine and probably enforced more than running (cheating) red lights, (except for blatant running cases.)
There's no ambiguity with box blocking - you're in the box or not.
It's simply not done.
Strict enforcement of this would go a long way relieving congestion downtown and elsewhere during rush hour.
Anecdote:
I was trying to take a left with the light on Land Blvd and a guy blocking the box not only wouldn't let me thru in any way but was ranting and giving me the finger. While his lane was backed up from the light blocks away. Almost had to get out of then car for that one.
Boston should also adopt
San Diego's snow removal techniques.