By Arthur Moore
Back a few years ago I tried to have a 4 cylinder economical vehicle. Sadly this is not a great idea for the streets of Somerville. Each time I get another vehicle I upgrade to a bigger model.
Just hoping the next purchase will tame the ride for my old body. As the streets here deteriorate more the decision to purchase a bigger vehicle becomes harder. My Chevy 3500 handles it pretty well but still need better. I am now looking at Range Rover and Hummers to see if they will tame the ride here. If the city had maintained the roads here, I would not be in this dilemma. But seeing how little effort now goes into maintain this city we the taxpayers have to make decisions based on this. When we watch our members of the round table making problems out of things that are not a problem instead of addressing the problems of the city this is why we end up with regular maintenance not being addressed. Besides the disrepair of the roads we have this thing about dumping paint all over the roads and for a city that wants to ban plastic we plant plastic poles int eh streets probably hoping they will grow. And like most every other city across this country of ours the accident rates go up the more the city helps(?) to tame it. Maybe it’s better they don’t help so much sometimes. BY creating more aggressive driving they make the problem worse. That being said I would like to do my off roading in places meant for it. Not in the city streets of Somerville. And burning question of the day. Where is the money going for repairs to the streets of Somerville? All I see is they take and redo a street and then after it is done they keep digging it up until it is back to be an off road place to drive off road vehicles. Do we not have people in charge that can figure that out? This has been going on for many years now. Well I am off to upgrade my suv to a much bigger vehicle thanks to the backroads of Somerville.
The city *does* require that utility work be done *before* a major repaving, which prevents the need to immediately dig up fresh pavement. I saw that happen on the Beacon Street rebuild, and what is currently happening on Holland Ave. It happened when I requested a ramp to the bike path from Thorndike; the city said Eversource needed to finish gas work first, which happened, and now the ramp is in.
Plastic bollards that prevent cars from neglectfully running into bicyclists or into oncoming traffic save lives. I don’t know why anyone would be against them.
In my experience Somerville takes much better care of its roads than a lot of other government entities. If I see a pothole and report it on the Somerville 311 app, it’s fixed within a few days. Over my time living here, the conditions on the roads have gotten better, not worse, as the streets with lots of potholes have gotten repaved, and there have been major improvements on high-traffic roads and our local bike path.
Driving heavier vehicles simply makes the pothole problem worse, as they are disproportionately bad for the roads. If 50% of people rode bicycles, as happens in Amsterdam and Copenhagen, there would be far fewer potholes and a lot less traffic congestion.