Nora Nagle has been relying on her guide dog to help her navigate the snow-clogged intersections around her South Boston home.
“At least on a couple of the corners, [there are] such massive snow piles — with no path through them to a crosswalk — that there’s no way a pedestrian could get across the street without walking in travel lanes,” said Nagle, who is legally blind. “Those piles are still there at a major intersection. And what are we, 10 days post storm? It’s ridiculous.”
Nagle got a guide dog around the historic snow accumulation of 2015, when she had trouble finding the narrow openings at street corners. The first few days after the latest storm, Nagle mostly stayed home because the streets were unmanageable.
“There are paths that are literally no more than 14 to 18 inches wide. I’m trying to walk along them with my guide dog in front of me and thinking, ‘I didn’t realize they made shovels this narrow!’” she laughed. “It’s very hard to get around.”
In Boston, property owners are responsible for clearing a 42-inch path through the snow on their sidewalk within three hours of snow stopping, or within three hours of sunrise if it snowed overnight. Commercial property owners can be fined up to $200 a day if they don’t comply, while residential property owners can be fined $50 or $100 a day.
With complaints piling up from residents since last week’s snowstorm, Boston City Councilors want the city to consider new tactics for snow clearing. Ideas include buying or renting “melters” through these cold temperatures and creating a “snow corps” of young volunteers to help shovel out for older homeowners.
There have been nearly $200,000 in fines and thousands of 311 complaints in Boston since the storm — and counting. Still, residents with disabilities and families with young children say it remains difficult to get around the city.
The nearly two feet of snow has remained thanks to stubbornly low temperatures, keeping walkways, intersections and wheelchair ramps blocked.
“We are so far removed from the storm — like, at this point, if stuff has not been cleared, that’s a huge problem,” said Brendan Kearney, the executive director of the statewide pedestrian advocacy organization WalkMassachusetts. “This was a big storm. Like, definitely was a problem. But we need to make sure that we are going back out there. Because it’s the beginning of February. We might have more snow.”
Thousands of 311 calls
In Boston alone, public works data as of Tuesday show the city has fined over 1,800 property owners more than $190,000 for snow removal violations. Nearly 13,000 snow-related requests have filed with 311 so far, ranging from issues with unshoveled sidewalks to requests for plowing to reporting an illegal space-saver.
Nagle found several 311 requests filed about the same stretch of sidewalk on N Street, near her home, where the shoveled path was too narrow. One closed without a fine because “an attempt was made to clear the sidewalk,” she said.
“So the message was, ‘If you do a completely half-assed job, well, then, you’re off the hook,’” she said.
“People have been fined before, and this seems to be a continuous issue. And so I think for larger private management companies, they can just eat up this cost,” noted Kat Torres Radisic, director of the Riders Transportation Access Group, an advocacy group that advises the MBTA on issues for people with disabilities and older adults.
A Boston city spokesperson didn’t respond to questions about snow removal.
But for Ben Bruno, who leads the board of directors at the pedestrian advocacy group, WalkUP Roslindale, clearing paths has been a “Sisyphean task.” Bruno takes his kids to school by MBTA bus and brought his shovel with him for the commute.
“Just every day, you’d go out, you would cut a little path just so folks at the bus stop — myself and my children included — wouldn’t have to stand in the street to wave down a bus or to get on,” he said. “You would clear just a two-foot-wide, little, just-enough-to-get-through [path]. And then, the next day, plows would come by and it would really be almost totally undone.”
The MBTA is responsible for clearing out stops on frequent bus routes and the Silver Line, but other bus stops fall under the municipalities’ responsibility.
That patchwork creates confusion, says Torres Radisic.
“That’s the main issue that we face, especially during storms and inclement weather, is that people are often placing the blame on other people,” said Torres Radisic. “There is a lack of understanding and coordination between the municipalities and the MBTA on whose responsibility it actually is to clear out these bus stops.”
Many of the intersections near him were cleared up earlier this week, Bruno says. But minor bus stops and intersections are still “treacherous,” he says.
Melters and snow corps proposed
Councilor Ed Flynn, who represents Nagle in South Boston, sent a letter to Mayor Michelle Wu and Chief of Streets Nick Gove last week urging the city to get melting tubs for storms like this one, where persistent freezing temperatures mean the snow is simply moved around by plows and shovels, but never goes away.
Wu said melters cost too much and are “not worth it without frequent need” in a social media post earlier this week.
“To supplement plows, we’ve been adding smaller Bobcats to better clear sidewalks, bus stops, bike lanes,” Wu wrote.
Boston City Council is also looking to hold hearings on how to rethink snow clearing and, specifically, the potential creation of a “snow corps.” That proposal now goes to the council’s committee on city services after receiving overwhelming support from councilors on Wednesday.
“I know this model has been adopted in Baltimore, Chicago — they have snow corps models that connect volunteers to neighbors who need help,” said Councilor Brian Worrell, who represents Mattapan, Dorchester and parts of Jamaica Plain and Roslindale. Some cities, he said, also pay people to shovel snow for their neighbors.
“Just looking at finding different ways on how to be supportive on removing snow and just getting the city back up and running,” said Worrell.
Those volunteer models, Kearney said, can work “decently,” he said, but may not be as responsive as people hope since they would need to undergo, for instance, a background check.
“It does require people to register in advance, so ... you can’t triage it right in the moment,” he said. “Once someone is in a program, it’s a really interesting model, but it doesn’t always address the in-the-moment issue of a need [of] someone who didn’t know about the program.”
Bostonians who come across an unshoveled street or treacherous intersection can call 311 or file a complaint in the city’s app. Bruno suggests also reaching out to your neighborhood liaison about ongoing trouble areas.
“My advice is: grab a shovel,” Bruno said. “If you’re an able-bodied person and you have the time, I would say just do what you can for your community.”
