Worcester Snow Tour – Franklin Street
by taxi - January 2, 2009 5:20pm
This is one my favorite shots in today’s snow tour series, taken from the corner of Putnam Lane and Franklin Street, looking inbound.
Underneath the snow next to that brand-new guardrail is the brand new sidewalk that the city completed just this past fall.
The roadside had slithered away in a landslide a couple of years ago. It took them a whole lot of time and money to finally get the dropoff safely anchored (on the other side of the guardrail), so that the whole road didn’t slide down there next to the railroad tracks.
That sidewalk goes all the way down to where Suffolk Street comes in, next to David Clark Company. It’s a really long walk.
Not one inch of it has any snow removed, though.
This sidewalk is either owned by the city, or the property abutting the sidewalk belongs to someone else. So, either way, the sidewalk snow ordinance should have effected the removal of the snow from this sidewalk by today.
Why do I claim this? Because either the city owns it, or someone else does. If the city owns it, they should have cleared the walkway. If the city doesn’t own it, then the abutting property owner has to be fined and billed by the linear foot for the snow removal.
Now, as a matter of simple fact, either the City Council is serious about making the sidewalks safe with this ordinance or it’s all about generating some serious revenue from this ordinance. Either way, this sidewalk is a real long one…
In other words, it’s either a lot of money or a lot of safety… either way, this particular sidewalk should’ve been cleared of snow by now. That it hasn’t speaks only to a third possibility, ie- this ordinance is just more meaningless baloney.