[Summit] disconnected by snow plowing

[Art Norwalk]

Good questions, Greg. But as you know better than most, there are no 
easy answers.

The key question is, when there's this much snow, where do you put 
it? The law says property owners can't shovel into the street but 
there's no prohibition against plows pouring it onto the sidewalks. 
And politically speaking, drivers are far squeakier wheels than walkers.

In the good/bad (take your pick) old days they could pour snow from 
congested, narrow sidewalk areas into the rivers, but of course 
that's a no-no today.

And then there's the reality of a city flirting with bankruptcy.

It's possible, perhaps even likely, that there may not be an 
environmentally acceptable and financially affordable way to keep all 
streets walkable every day of the year. Unless you have other ideas 
for a "new balance."

At 04:01 PM 2/13/2013, Greg Gerritt wrote:

>I live right off one of the oldest roads in North America.  North 
>Main St was originally the foot path used by the people of the 
>Narragansett nation  traveling  between the confluence of the rivers 
>in what became downtown Providence and the settlement at the falls 
>at Pawtucket.  The reason N Main has been used by people walking the 
>approximately 4 miles from Providence to Pawtucket for so long 
>is  that it takes you out of the Moshassuck valley at a relatively 
>easy place to climb up to the terrace, keeps you out of the swamps 
>and the up and down terrain of what became the North Burial Ground, 
>and then crosses the divide in to the Blackstone watershed at the 
>easiest place to walk over the ridge.  Considering how long people 
>have been walking this trail it is rather ironic and sad that when 
>it snows the route along N Main and at its southern end Canal St is 
>not passable to pedestrians.  The road is plowed, the traffic moves, 
>but long stretches of it are either unshoveled or have their 
>connectivity blocked by mounds of snow at the corners or next to driveways.
>
>For pedestrians throughout Providence and surrounding urban 
>communities the connectivity is broken in the snow due to the 
>accommodations to the cars that are one of the key components in the 
>global weirding bringing us these crazy storms,    It appears the 
>neighborhoods are accessible, with more shoveled sidewalks, more 
>corner cut throughs, and less crowded streets, but the connections 
>between the neighborhoods, and the areas between the neighborhoods 
>and downtown, especially some of bridges over the Interstate which 
>seem to be orphans, are rather weak.  It happens that the overpass 
>on Broad St was shoveled, but then,  and I found this in many places 
>today, when the plows came back to widen the streets, it pushed snow 
>back onto the shoveled out sidewalks.
>
>Being the obligatory walker I know routes that expose me to less 
>traffic, I avoid most of N Main St, traveling up on the hill rather 
>than the old road I can get to downtown in one piece.   But if we 
>are to be a walkable city, we are going to have to strike a new 
>balance between opening the way for cars, and keeping the old trail 
>accessible to people on foot.-
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