Sucky DPW (AKA, a lawyer's fantansy world)

[mattm04]

With all the recent snow in the north east roads are still less then desirable. Many places no longer have shoulders or turn lanes, even some major roads.

One particular intersection, a three way stop with one direction coming up a steep winding hill not having to stop that has numerous accidents in the summer is now 10x worse. If you are trying to go down the hill you can relatively easily see oncoming traffic, which stops and see the traffic coming up the hill, which does not.

However if you need to cross said intersection, some genius decided to dump piles of snow (several feet taller than the roof of a SUV) making it impossible to see oncoming traffic coming up the hill, which as I mentioned does not stop. To see the traffic you actually have to pull out into the travel lane.

I have had several near misses and seen several near misses in addition to a few minor fender bender accidents. I know I called the local DPW and know others called the local Police to report it to no avail. Well yesterday coming into I work a saw another minor accident. The guy in front of my trying to cross was hit by a car coming up the hill. By some miracle the only damage was to the front license plate holder on the guy who tried to cross. They both went on their way.

However on the way home, someone was not so lucky. The road was closed. Fire trucks, police cars and ambulances were out. Seems someone hit a oil delivery truck trying to pull out. Luckily they only caused damage to the bumper area on the truck, but sever damage to their car.

Today, I had to run some errands. The road was closed again. This time it was because a huge front end loader and several bobcats and snow blowers were at work removing all the snow from that area, down to the grass and dumping it in trucks and hauling it away. If they had only known before.

[AccountingDrone]

Let me guess, Avon Hill?

[Kogarashi]

Ugh. Our city's like that too, due to the DPW not following through on the e-mail claiming they were scraping out the streets before this last big storm. Huuuuuuuge piles of snow at each intersection blocking traffic, which is bad when there are traffic lanes that don't have to stop at all.

Saw some streets blocked off today as huge loaders scraped them out, but we'll see if they actually get to the non-business-district streets.

[blas]

We got a 22 inch blizzard back in early December. Naturally, all the snow was piled up as high as possible until the city would get off their asses and take the snow away.

It was nearly January before any of those were taken care of. It was dangerous to turn from any residential street, sometimes even streets with stop lights.

And yes, it was nearly January before some shoulders or turn lanes returned.

And this is Wisconsin.

Unacceptable. Completely unacceptable.

[mattm04]

We got a 22 inch blizzard back in early December. Naturally, all the snow was piled up as high as possible until the city would get off their asses and take the snow away.

It was nearly January before any of those were taken care of. It was dangerous to turn from any residential street, sometimes even streets with stop lights.

And yes, it was nearly January before some shoulders or turn lanes returned.

And this is Wisconsin.

Unacceptable. Completely unacceptable.

Almost forgot about the streets that are 3-4 feet narrower each lane due to the snow. It is scary riding the double yellow with oncoming traffic. If you try to pull to the right, the snow turned into ice just pushes you right back.

[blas]

That, also. And streets that are already narrow without snow buildup are just as dangerous, especially if you have to dodge parked cars and someone is coming at you!

[Kogarashi]

Hear hear! And one of the streets in our area has one whole lane cut in half by snow that the DPW can't be bothered to actually remove, just pack against the rest of the snow on the curb. And this street is one of those ridiculously-narrow-plus-street-parking streets.

[Daemonmonkey]

I think this is a global problem. Is it snow, a poorly constructed road section,etc.

Authorities will not change the way it's done until something severe happens there. People warn about a crossing that's too dangerous, authorities leave it until somebody gets seriously harmed or killed, and THEN make the changes that should've been made years ago...