Great Moments in Traffic Engineering.
By Jim Conley • Apr 28th, 2008 • Email This Post to a Friend •
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Remember when Brookline DPW Commissioner A. Thomas DeMaio promoted a clerk in his office (with no previous experience) to transportation director [see previous post]? Well, when you aspire to the type of planning that results in the metered space pictured above (from the Beacon Street reconstruction project) it all makes sense.
Hey, I know. Let’s give town government another $5 million through a Brookline override to do more of this type work.
Heck, we’ll need it to cover the legal fees when a driver plows into the pole.
Update: I agree with Neal at the TAB that the pole is likely slated for demolition. The crux (as we say in writing) of this story is not the pole, but the parking meter. Why put a meter at the space? Is it more efficient to install them all at once? That wouldn’t matter to town government.
I’ll tell you why the meter is there. It’s because someone at town hall could imagine a car or motorcycle sneaking into the space and—oh, the horror—parking for free. Remember the farmer’s market debacle?
Same thing. Different parking lot.
Jim Conley is publisher of On Brookline.
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Bikers are psyched; they can always have a nice full space that noone else can fit into set aside for them.
This metered non-parkable space = non-cents.
How can you blame a recently appointed person for a problem resulting from plans that stretch back 5 years? I would blame Bill Smith, the town’s engineer on the project who is suppossed to be overseeing the plans and the work being done by Barletta. He’s been there from day one overseeing (no causing) this mess.
That pole has been there for months and apparently nobody noticed, or nobody bothered to do anything about it. Shouldn’t they at least paint it yellow and put some reflectors on it so nobody slams into it? There are a half dozen similar spaces along Beacon Street.
This says a lot about the management of this town. Nobody in charge gives a damn. But they want more money.
I mean, what does it say about our town’s leadership, when the only things they can think of to cut should the override fail (schools and essential services) are exactly the things people care most about.
Let me tell you where I’d like to stick that pole.
The DPW engineering staff uses consultants to do the real “engineering” work while their only responsibility appears to be project “oversight.” As shown by the picture above - and many other examples along Beacon Street - they apparently don’t have any input into either a project’s design or its implementation (if they do, things are worse than anyone expected). So what are we paying for? DPW staff that work only as site inspectors during a brief construction season and who don’t care when even common sense says something is amiss? Are DeMaio and Ditto doing any oversight of either their staff or the consultants?
Is it possible that the pole was already there, and that by increasing the width of the parking area, they were able to sneak in an extra space for some additional revenue from a small car or motorcycle?
What you see as an error, I see as an opportunity!
How about hitching a pony to the parking meter? Come to think of it, Town officials might start looking in the piles they have created in our town over the years for ponies instead of overrides. And charge for pony rides! (Warning: as the Indian Chief said to President Truman who was warmly surprised by all the “Hoopahs” in response to his speech, after Truman finished and was prepared to leave the reservation: “Watch out for the “Hoopah!” Vote “NO, NO, HOOPAH!”