With almost a foot and a half of snow falling on Concord over the weekend, it’s time for the regular winter question: What happens with sidewalks?
The city clears about 100 miles of sidewalks as part of its Winter Weather Policy. As you would expect in our car-centric world, clearing places to drive and park takes precedence over clearing places to walk.
“Sidewalk snow removal is subject to the availability of personnel. The need to maintain safe roadways will generally take priority,” is how the city policy puts it.
Concord prioritizes clearing sidewalks downtown, an area defined as Storrs Street and Main Street as far south as Sexton Avenue, as well as North State Street and Green Street between Center and Pleasant streets. It also prioritizes school walking routes, which are scattered throughout the city and range from busy thoroughfares like Loudon Road to quieter roads.
Other sidewalks, whether they are as long as the one on Fisherville Road or as short as those in public subdivisions — private subdivisions are the responsibility of the home-owners — get cleared as time, personnel and machinery allows.
Sephanie Breton, the city’s public information officer, noted that there are some sidewalks where Concord can’t use its pedestrian plow, either because they’re too narrow, have “irregular geometry” or have obstructions such as utility poles, signposts, trees and retaining walls.
“In those locations, plowing would pose a safety risk to adjacent property, fixed objects or pedestrians,” she wrote. In those cases, locals often do the clearing.
One complication after a storm like this one is where to put the snow; at some point you can’t just keep pushing it aside. The city hauls off snow as needed to its snow depot on Old Turnpike Road; in the downtown area this is done with a dozen or more dump trucks.
“Downtown snow removal operations average 5,000 cubic yards of snow for each overnight, equivalent to 1 million gallons of water,” according to the city.