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Citizen complaint of the day: Really sad about a fallen sign in Brighton
By adamg on Sat, 06/27/2015 - 4:55pm
Complaints about damaged and downed signs are not unusual on Citizens Connect. Most people, however, don't pose with the signs to show just how sad they are about them, as this lady did on Claymoss Road in Brighton.
Neighborhoods:
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Comments
The complaint is incorrect.
"Has pole: no"
Um...what is the sign attached to?
Nothing
It was stuck in a small patch of concrete. These signs get lose through a combination of weather, people attaching bikes to them and then the city pulling them up to take away the abandoned bikes a year or so later.
Why would the city take down the sign
instead of cutting the bike lock?
It's easier?
The last time I saw it done it involved one of those u-locks. Probably a lot faster to just yank up the sign, then try to re-anchor it with fresh cement.
Has pole: no
The sign report automatically defaults to "has pole: no" if you don't specifically select "yes." (In fact, I have even had it show up as "no" in reports where I HAVE selected "yes.")
Pole
Maybe it's attached to a Polish person.
Well, yeah, but...
I'm much more concerned about the cross-walk signal just a block away at the corner of Colbourne and Comm Ave which was taken out by a car last weekend. Getting to the T platform is always a bit of a game of Frogger there, but now we don't even have the possibility of getting traffic to stop.
And how does someone
And how does someone reporting another problem in Citizen's Connect prevent city hall from fixing your problem???
Good question
Maybe you can ask them why such an obvious safety hazard as a missing cross light hasn't been fixed.
(Yeesh, touchy much?)
Here's a theory
Perhaps everybody thinks that everyone else must have reported it already, but in reality nobody has reported it.
That neighborhood
is mostly students/people who are new to Boston. They probably don't know where to report it.
I lived out there for awhile, back before Citizens Connect existed, and several street lights on my street were out at a time when I came home from work at midnight. After I spent a good hour or so searching for the right phone number to call, the operator gave me a hard time and refused to accept my report because I didn't have a 617 phone number, and then the website wouldn't accept my report also for a similar reason.
In my current town, I spent a good 40 minutes trying to find the police department's preferred non-emergency line before I could call in a report, because the website was a nightmare. When you're new somewhere, it's really hard to figure out who to call.
On the other hand, Cambridge
On the other hand, Cambridge has no 311 system, and it's always taken me less than 2 minutes to reach the person *directly* responsible for my issue, by phone or email. None of this nonsense where a 311 agent notes "problem reported, case closed" while the problem hasn't been fixed.
What about the police?
The spot has been "treated"; a traffic barrel has been put over the stump of the walk sign and a bunch of sand was put down to absorb what ever leaked out of the offending vehicle. I have reported that signal when it just wasn't functioning, but I'm assuming (quite possibly wrongly) that the traffic department is aware of the situation this time around...
Sad hipster
Is sad.
(Ducks, flees)
When the very sad hipster
sees the dead sign,
she gets very sad and
makes a thumbs down sign.
But when City hall never came
to solve the whole issue,
she got very mad
and made the officials sad.
(Ducks shoe, flees)
With the progress made this week in
the Supreme Court this just shows us we have a long way to go. Violence against sign poles needs to become a cause for all Americans not just Hipsters looking for a place to lock up the 10 speed.