A newly paved and painted raised bike lane in Newton has utility poles and big orange construction barrels running right down the middle. WBZ-TV's David Wade reports.
FYI, I'm the guy who sent in the video that started this piece. David Wade did a fantastic job digging into this mess, as I knew he would. I didn't know what the final cut would look like until it aired and I was really pleased with it. I especially liked the clever way he seamlessly integrated parts of my video into the overall piece. ("Now that we're warmed up..." Genius!)
The problem is that there's no penalty for the utility companies, so why would they do the work? MA DOT should give them a deadline and a fine schedule in case they miss it. How is that not a thing?
The utilities likely had no input in this daft decision to place bike pavement through their long established utility ROW. Looks like they are trying to help, but moving poles supporting multiple vendors is lengthy. DOT only had to forget one (Verizon in this case) to snarl the movement for years. Also the cost of pole movement is passed on to the customer as higher rates for every service involved. Cheerleeders in government civil service often forget the details when they come up with their latest brilliant idea.
Because by law, the utilities are entitled to those poles in those locations. They are not entitled to just move the poles somewhere else. The city doesn't have the authority to just terminate that right, nor to give them a right to put poles in other locations to move them to. The rights of ways for utility services are complex, and tend to take years and millions of dollars to get corrected. Because among other things, you have to actually compensate the property owners for where you want to move those to, and potentially redesign parking lots, landscaping, buildings, and a huge amount of utility infrastructure to move them if there's not already enough clearance to move the poles with whatever restrictions and access requirements the poles and the services on them might have. The utility companies were there first, and have every legal right to stay there in perpetuity. They are not, and cannot be required to move under the RoW they have. They are legally not required to do a thing, because they have every legal right to be there. It's questionable if the city has the legal right to put a bike lane there in the first place with the poles there.
But now, with the asphalt already laid down, the pole will come up, then the holes will be patched, and those holes will be the origin point of frost heaves. Absolute money-wasting geniuses.
Oh, read up on the center bike lane on Valencia St in San Francisco that everyone hates & has to be undone. Now the businesses w/ parklets had to choose if they want to give it up or keep it. It the latter, will it be curbside or a floating parklet (like an island), which forces patrons & staff to cross the bike bath to access it. Mission Local has a good piece about the fiasco.
What ever happened to court orders or the government giving them a deadline. If this was a homeowner or small business owner thats exactly would happen
40 years ago we had a similar problem where a utility pole was in the road after replacing a bridge. The Road Crew Foreman, a WWII Combat Engineer veteran of D-Day, got fed up waiting after 6 months. He called the power company and asked at what height he should chainsaw off the pole because he was getting ready to move it himself. The power company showed up in an hour and moved the pole off of the roadway. RIP George. As the town's engineer, I got the board of selectment to enact a series of road ordinances to protect the town from shenanagans of utility companies and property owners. Impose fines and the companies notice.
What a joke. At least here in Texas, the State DOT tells the utilities they have a deadline for completion of relocations - if they miss the deadline, the state Utility Commission gets involved and will light a proverbial financial fire under their behinds to get it done. There is no way in the world this project should have gotten to the paving stage without those relocations complete and the poles completely removed.
texas unlike MA will also provide information and not keep it to themselves. they also will keep track of all the needed info to contact whoever needs to be contacted to let them know. not a find out when some customer on the line is affected and then figure it out. had that happen to me when i was doing Telcom work in MA. 100 percent can bet you no one knows what lines are what and who is on any of these poles. one of the reasons i hated pole work. loved under ground work was labeled and easy to identify and was MAPPED OUT ish.
The state & federal money pays the utilities to set the poles back & move their facilities. Based on what I see? Eversource is done. Telecom has to move their stuff. As well as the town has to move their street lights. When that happens? It typically takes months to years. Most retirement work done by the phone company is contractors. The cable tv companies have to hire contractors too. Then after all facilities are removed off the poles. Then another contractor removes the wood poles. As for patching? That will need to be farmed out to another contractor. This all takes time. Sometimes lots of time.
Yes. My neighbor hood has what they call zombie utility poles. The last utility to remove their wires is responsible for cutting down the pole. The poles are owned by the electric company but they have the rule in the contracts with cable, street lights and telephone. Not all the poles get removed.
@ Interesting? The last utility typically off is telephone in Connecticut. They share custody of the poles with the power companies. Whoever owns the pole here/removes it.
@@mvl9591 It's not the last utility it's who ever owns the poles , cin some cites and counties it's a night mare to remove the poles because the cities, counties get property taxes from them
@@niyablake Utilities can't spare the man power to remove them. It gets farmed out to a contractor to remove them. They might do 10 in a day with a machine operator & a helper. That's a lot cheaper than the utility paying 2 lineman to do the job. Plus they use an equipment trailer to load them on. That can hold 10 poles without an issue. The most we can load on a pole dinky is 3 on a great day. Otherwise it exceeds DOT weight limit & must be unloaded back at the shop.
That $22 Million had to go somewhere. Right into the pockets of the people who did this very useful project of making an unusable bike lane. Government corruption knows no bounds.
Utility pole sharing is a necessary but complicated process. Lots of rules and bureaucracy and DOT decided on their own to go ahead with their part of the project without waiting for the poles to be removed. Picture for just a moment what our streets would look like if there were 5 sets of poles running along the street - One for each utility........
There was a road in Holden MA intersecting with Shrewsbury street where, for as long as I lived in the area, a utility pole sat in the middle of the end of the road. No island, no painted loupe, just a pole. I looked just now on Google Street view (I think it was Evans Street?) and the pole is no longer there.
I live in an Olympic city and I know for a fact that these kind of things are always "a long and detailed process" - until there is a hard deadline and then a truck shows up and it all magically gets done in one afternoon.
Ah, the wisdom of government and corporate policies. Similar case here in Hawaii of people not really thinking.... All the lane and crosswalk striping along a main thoroughfare in the town I lived in was redone. Nice sharp clear lines replaced the old worn out and dirty lines at a cost of $220,000. Job took about a month and was pretty involved, including surface patching, so money well spent. Two months later, the city commenced major roadwork along the entire length of the thoroughfare, literally tearing out all the new striping. A year later, the roadwork was completed along with new striping. When the city was asked why the road was restriped just before the construction, the reply was that the contract for the restriping was already in place and canceling it would cost a penalty of $20,000. So the city saved 20K by spending 220K. Icing on the cake: while the city was taking a year to redo the road thru my little town, the state was also doing major roadwork on the only other road through the town. So the only two roadways to get through the town were being worked on. What normally was a 10 minute drive now took between 30-45 minutes. The city's roadwork told drivers to use the alternate route (the state road) and the state told drivers to use the alternate route (the city road).
This is just normal in South Florida, very common to see poles in the middle of a sidewalk, bus stops or any other inanimate objects they decide to put in the way
**Comprehensive Plan for Bike Lane Project Execution** **Phase 1: Pole and Equipment Installation Deadline** * Companies that have not yet installed their posts will be provided with a specific deadline to complete the task. Failure to meet this deadline will result in a fine. * In cases where a company is unable to make a decision on the order of its post installation, the city will designate a company name and a hat to represent the company on the pole. The city will then provide a date corresponding to each post’s completion, with late fines applicable unless certain circumstances arise. **Phase 2: Removal of Old Equipment and Poles** * The same procedures as Phase 1 will be followed for removing the old equipment and poles. **Phase 3: Construction of the Bike Lane** * Once the phases 1 and 2 are complete, the city will proceed with constructing the bike lane. This will involve filling any holes and completing the bike lane as planned. By implementing this plan, the city can ensure that the bike lane project is completed efficiently and effectively. This approach would have minimized the need for repeated work and minimized the inconvenience to residents and businesses.
@@MonkeyJedi99 They should have taken an extra car lane for a temporary bike lane until the problem can be fixed. The road is probably not projected to need it's full capacity for several years anyways.
If one guy with a chainsaw or a big truck removes one pole, will all of the companies be finally forced to remove their cables to the new pole or will they repair the old pole? (Hypothetical question 😊)
It took 3 years to move and remove the poles on the stretch f Cranberry Hwy in Wareham that was re -designed. It's not uncommon to see a portion of an old pole bolted to a new pole. Being monopolies, utilities have no incentive to do better.
I took nearly 3 years for the poles to move in Ashland MA on rt 135. Only recently did the cables get cheeky workaround which cut the poles and suspended the wires.
Well, the problem really is that reduce. The sidewalk poles were existing their and one hand didn’t talk to the other properly knows gonna take at least two years if not longer.
It's ridiculous, but there is a greenway that runs parallel to that road its entire length that has access points all along. Even if the poles were removed it's the better way to cycle that area.
Well at least I know the government is still clueless about what is actually going on. I was worried for a second that the government was actually doing a good and professional job
Polls were there first. Obviously they planned to move the poles at some point; it should have been done before before they paved and painted the bike lane. Probably the power company is delaying moving the poles because it costs them money they don't have. The poles look old enough that they should be replaced anyway.
Yup, electric has to be moved first. Some of those poles still have streetlights on them. That's electric. Nothing can happen until they're moved. I used to work on a crew doing pole transfers. If the other lines were out of the way we'd go all the way down that street in a single day, with ladders.
Honestly this just goes to show people that this road in particular isn’t big enough to accommodate a bike line. Majority of cities or towns road infrastructure isn’t big or flexible enough. I say use an available till a solution gets figured out.
Completely absurd. You won't get joined up planning and design if different private companies are responsible for different parts of public infrastructure. All the extra bureaucracy involved, waiting for corporations to do something that will inevitably cost them money for little benefit. It's no wonder they put off doing things like this, there's no incentive for Verizon to move the poles. Even though this situaton is clearly ridiculous, at least there will be pressure on them now that the bike lane has been built.
The city could use eminent domain. They use it all the time to force home owners out to use for government and commercial interests. They can do it to these poles as well.
The poles are being moved, and the lane is clossed. This isn't news. Look at them they don't have any wires on them. They have to wait for all the company with wires on the pole to move them before they can be pulled.
Just like the signs that get installed in the middle of sidewalks or sidewalks built with poles in the middle instead of around the side of poles, both forcing people pushing strollers or using wheelchairs out into the vehicle traffic.
What idiot dreamt that up? I do not trust drivers to respect bikers even if bike lanes are clearly marked. Biking alongside traffic is very dangerous, and utility poles in the centre of lanes just makes cyclists more likely to have an accident!
@@mikejones9906that's incredibly dangerous for any pedestrian walking along the sidewalk too. There's a reason bikes should not be riding in the sidewalk and we should have separate right of way for each mode.
And this is exactly why the government is hated. Profound incompetence and apathy. And yes utility companies are technically private but they’re also heavily subsidized and legal monopoly so they’re basically government
Someone needs to loose their job. There should have been no doing this project until the utilities were moved. Utility companies do not have unlimited resources. Projects take time. So why was their not any co ordination? The people want to go after the utlity companies right away instead of those who planned this in the first place makes me laugh.
Some one needs a medal! Pole company: "Why do we need to remove the poles? There is no bikelane?" Now there is and they HAVE to move them. At their cost! Including reparing the holes. Taxmoney saved!
Look, I agree that this is silly, but at least the new poles are in place and the old poles WILL be removed as soon as the lines are moved over. This is really more of a planning fail than a project fail.
We have asomething like that here in Toront. Its been like this for at least a decade they're still waiting for the the hydro companies to movethier lines the hydro companies say they can not moe the lines because the telecom companies own te poles and that they filed for approval to move the lines a decade ago. They figure it might be done by 2125 under the current project plan.
They should fine the companies involved 100 billion dollars per second for every second they delay getting the job done and give them a deadline and if the job isn't complete then the fine goes up to 200 billion per second and so on also the Ceos of the companies should be immediately arrested and held in jail until the job is done. Its time to stop playing around with these idiots.
That is one of the BIGGEST FAILURES i have ever seen. WTF?! They will have do a bunch of patches to the road that will always be a weak point to the surface of the road.
The funding for bike path comes from a budget . The money allocated must be used before the end of fiscal year. If they didn’t put them in now, there’s no guarantee that the money would be allocated again the following year. Putting the cart before the horse ensures the bike lane was built. The poles WILL be removed, but nothing is ever good enough or fast enough for these so called “advocates” is it?
People just can't complain enough can they? Cyclists especially but this comment section is just as bad. MassDOT spent 22million on this street project and built new bike lanes. And, essentially, you're all complaining because the project isn't done yet? What nonsense. "Why didn't they move the poles first?" OK, so you wanted them to wait with the entire project until the poles are moved so that cyclists aren't confused? That makes no sense. The street is done, the utility work is behind, you aren't going to delay the project for a bike lane and the contractor that paved the street isn't going to wait around for the utilities to figure their lives out. So you have the contractor finish the work they're paid to do and you have the utilities patch the holes they make when they take the poles down. Simple, easy, done.
You spent all this time to produce a piece for an incomplete project. Yeah, the pole are in the way because the utility crews haven’t moved the lines off the poles yet. We waited 4 years for Eversource and Verizon to remove their poles from a project in New Bedford over seen by MassDOT.
So was it the bike lane being put in first then the poles or the other way around? I'm thinking the more inward poles are the older ones and have probably been there for decades at least. So then why make the bike lane there at that point when it's being made into an unsafe situation? Should of simply waited till they took out the poles.
FYI, I'm the guy who sent in the video that started this piece. David Wade did a fantastic job digging into this mess, as I knew he would. I didn't know what the final cut would look like until it aired and I was really pleased with it. I especially liked the clever way he seamlessly integrated parts of my video into the overall piece. ("Now that we're warmed up..." Genius!)
What genius at Mass DOT decided to build the bike lane BEFORE moving the damn poles!?!?
Seriously! It’s infuriating
Somebody who does not understand basic engineering
One who's getting a kickback from a paving company?
It's only money
Democrats
The problem is that there's no penalty for the utility companies, so why would they do the work? MA DOT should give them a deadline and a fine schedule in case they miss it. How is that not a thing?
The utilities likely had no input in this daft decision to place bike pavement through their long established utility ROW. Looks like they are trying to help, but moving poles supporting multiple vendors is lengthy. DOT only had to forget one (Verizon in this case) to snarl the movement for years.
Also the cost of pole movement is passed on to the customer as higher rates for every service involved.
Cheerleeders in government civil service often forget the details when they come up with their latest brilliant idea.
Because the poles were there first. Now you have to contact the city and county for permits . Oh and the pay property taxes on those poles
Because by law, the utilities are entitled to those poles in those locations. They are not entitled to just move the poles somewhere else. The city doesn't have the authority to just terminate that right, nor to give them a right to put poles in other locations to move them to.
The rights of ways for utility services are complex, and tend to take years and millions of dollars to get corrected. Because among other things, you have to actually compensate the property owners for where you want to move those to, and potentially redesign parking lots, landscaping, buildings, and a huge amount of utility infrastructure to move them if there's not already enough clearance to move the poles with whatever restrictions and access requirements the poles and the services on them might have.
The utility companies were there first, and have every legal right to stay there in perpetuity. They are not, and cannot be required to move under the RoW they have. They are legally not required to do a thing, because they have every legal right to be there. It's questionable if the city has the legal right to put a bike lane there in the first place with the poles there.
Wrestling
bc the corporations will lobby against it
That's the most America thing I've ever heard
NAH look at pictures of a number of other countries seen poles absolutely no idea how they do anything with all the wires on them,
This doesn’t happen in red states
@@CN45475 That’s because they don’t believe in bike lanes. They believe cars always have priority over everything and everyone else.
The poles should have been moved before the bike lane project even began.
But now, with the asphalt already laid down, the pole will come up, then the holes will be patched, and those holes will be the origin point of frost heaves.
Absolute money-wasting geniuses.
Paperwork said it goes there, so it was put there, and we don't do powerpoles.
There has been construction on this street since I was born. No exaggeration. It’s absolutely pathetic!
I know. I go through there occasionally.
Gotta keep those construction workers happy right
And the funniest part of it is that it stays an ugly american street XD
Only the rich complain that their streets get fixed all the time.
I bet it was originally a wildlife route.
Then we hear "Why don't cyclists use the bike lane?"
yeah, and "No one uses bike lanes, remove them so that I can really drive there!"
Cities seem to love cars, but hate people.
That's America in a nutshell.
Come to Ontario its even better here they are removing bikel anes because of congestion and interference with utility services.
This sounds like Massachusetts all right.
Oh, read up on the center bike lane on Valencia St in San Francisco that everyone hates & has to be undone. Now the businesses w/ parklets had to choose if they want to give it up or keep it. It the latter, will it be curbside or a floating parklet (like an island), which forces patrons & staff to cross the bike bath to access it. Mission Local has a good piece about the fiasco.
What ever happened to court orders or the government giving them a deadline. If this was a homeowner or small business owner thats exactly would happen
..... ya MA does not take based on the poles so they dont know anything about them or have any of the info.
40 years ago we had a similar problem where a utility pole was in the road after replacing a bridge. The Road Crew Foreman, a WWII Combat Engineer veteran of D-Day, got fed up waiting after 6 months. He called the power company and asked at what height he should chainsaw off the pole because he was getting ready to move it himself. The power company showed up in an hour and moved the pole off of the roadway. RIP George. As the town's engineer, I got the board of selectment to enact a series of road ordinances to protect the town from shenanagans of utility companies and property owners. Impose fines and the companies notice.
What a joke.
At least here in Texas, the State DOT tells the utilities they have a deadline for completion of relocations - if they miss the deadline, the state Utility Commission gets involved and will light a proverbial financial fire under their behinds to get it done.
There is no way in the world this project should have gotten to the paving stage without those relocations complete and the poles completely removed.
texas unlike MA will also provide information and not keep it to themselves. they also will keep track of all the needed info to contact whoever needs to be contacted to let them know. not a find out when some customer on the line is affected and then figure it out. had that happen to me when i was doing Telcom work in MA. 100 percent can bet you no one knows what lines are what and who is on any of these poles. one of the reasons i hated pole work. loved under ground work was labeled and easy to identify and was MAPPED OUT ish.
The state & federal money pays the utilities to set the poles back & move their facilities. Based on what I see? Eversource is done. Telecom has to move their stuff. As well as the town has to move their street lights. When that happens? It typically takes months to years. Most retirement work done by the phone company is contractors. The cable tv companies have to hire contractors too. Then after all facilities are removed off the poles. Then another contractor removes the wood poles. As for patching? That will need to be farmed out to another contractor. This all takes time. Sometimes lots of time.
Yes. My neighbor hood has what they call zombie utility poles. The last utility to remove their wires is responsible for cutting down the pole. The poles are owned by the electric company but they have the rule in the contracts with cable, street lights and telephone. Not all the poles get removed.
@ Interesting?
The last utility typically off is telephone in Connecticut. They share custody of the poles with the power companies. Whoever owns the pole here/removes it.
@@mvl9591 It's not the last utility it's who ever owns the poles , cin some cites and counties it's a night mare to remove the poles because the cities, counties get property taxes from them
@@niyablake Utilities can't spare the man power to remove them. It gets farmed out to a contractor to remove them. They might do 10 in a day with a machine operator & a helper. That's a lot cheaper than the utility paying 2 lineman to do the job. Plus they use an equipment trailer to load them on. That can hold 10 poles without an issue. The most we can load on a pole dinky is 3 on a great day. Otherwise it exceeds DOT weight limit & must be unloaded back at the shop.
@johnclyne6350 were I live the power company does all the pole work them self. The only subscribers you will see is for cable and some telco
Take out the pole and turn off the electricity now
That $22 Million had to go somewhere. Right into the pockets of the people who did this very useful project of making an unusable bike lane.
Government corruption knows no bounds.
That is dumb. who's the engineer? Tax payer's money at work right there.
Not the engineer’s fault. Totally on the eversource company
Utility pole sharing is a necessary but complicated process. Lots of rules and bureaucracy and DOT decided on their own to go ahead with their part of the project without waiting for the poles to be removed. Picture for just a moment what our streets would look like if there were 5 sets of poles running along the street - One for each utility........
There was a road in Holden MA intersecting with Shrewsbury street where, for as long as I lived in the area, a utility pole sat in the middle of the end of the road. No island, no painted loupe, just a pole.
I looked just now on Google Street view (I think it was Evans Street?) and the pole is no longer there.
5 utilities, what are they?
@@PRH123 Guessing:
Electricity, phone, three cable companies (some cities are big enough to have more than one).
@ ah, OK, internet as well I suppose. Sorry for the dumb question, around here they’re all buried, so it’s not a thing.
@@PRH123 Telephone and electric of course , but each fiber, cable TV and internet provider is its own utility.
I live in an Olympic city and I know for a fact that these kind of things are always "a long and detailed process" - until there is a hard deadline and then a truck shows up and it all magically gets done in one afternoon.
Ah, the wisdom of government and corporate policies.
Similar case here in Hawaii of people not really thinking....
All the lane and crosswalk striping along a main thoroughfare in the town I lived in was redone. Nice sharp clear lines replaced the old worn out and dirty lines at a cost of $220,000. Job took about a month and was pretty involved, including surface patching, so money well spent.
Two months later, the city commenced major roadwork along the entire length of the thoroughfare, literally tearing out all the new striping.
A year later, the roadwork was completed along with new striping.
When the city was asked why the road was restriped just before the construction, the reply was that the contract for the restriping was already in place and canceling it would cost a penalty of $20,000. So the city saved 20K by spending 220K.
Icing on the cake: while the city was taking a year to redo the road thru my little town, the state was also doing major roadwork on the only other road through the town. So the only two roadways to get through the town were being worked on. What normally was a 10 minute drive now took between 30-45 minutes. The city's roadwork told drivers to use the alternate route (the state road) and the state told drivers to use the alternate route (the city road).
That seems ligit.
I've been working in Needham for 9 years. Who are the clowns constantly running this circus?
This is just normal in South Florida, very common to see poles in the middle of a sidewalk, bus stops or any other inanimate objects they decide to put in the way
**Comprehensive Plan for Bike Lane Project Execution**
**Phase 1: Pole and Equipment Installation Deadline**
* Companies that have not yet installed their posts will be provided with a specific deadline to complete the task. Failure to meet this deadline will result in a fine.
* In cases where a company is unable to make a decision on the order of its post installation, the city will designate a company name and a hat to represent the company on the pole. The city will then provide a date corresponding to each post’s completion, with late fines applicable unless certain circumstances arise.
**Phase 2: Removal of Old Equipment and Poles**
* The same procedures as Phase 1 will be followed for removing the old equipment and poles.
**Phase 3: Construction of the Bike Lane**
* Once the phases 1 and 2 are complete, the city will proceed with constructing the bike lane. This will involve filling any holes and completing the bike lane as planned.
By implementing this plan, the city can ensure that the bike lane project is completed efficiently and effectively. This approach would have minimized the need for repeated work and minimized the inconvenience to residents and businesses.
Where I live the first thing that is done before road improvements is to move the utilities. It is part of the road improvement budget.
Perfect example of "Not my job, I did my job".
Why don't they resupport the top of the poles and the existing wires from the new pole to clear the bike lane?
That there is some next level engineering.
Really? Did *nobody* think of planning a who-does-what-and-when?
I remember poles in the middle of a national bike route bike lane in the UK.
The bike path is closed. What more do you need to know? They are not done yet.
Why did they pave it then?
@@jamesphillips2285 Because the work order said to pave it.
Hourly workers are engaged in malicious compliance all the time.
@@MonkeyJedi99 They should have taken an extra car lane for a temporary bike lane until the problem can be fixed.
The road is probably not projected to need it's full capacity for several years anyways.
Those poles should have been moved before the new bike lane was put in place.
This has the making of a new Olympic sport. Be the first to get a Gold in Urban Biking: slalom pole course.
Wait! Our sport first: ua-cam.com/video/VMinwf-kRlA/v-deo.html
@ maybe a Combine Event: Headwind, utility pole slalom and bike stealing.
If one guy with a chainsaw or a big truck removes one pole, will all of the companies be finally forced to remove their cables to the new pole or will they repair the old pole? (Hypothetical question 😊)
I don't know, but I can see those poles are carrying fiber - it would be fixed in a matter of hours, maybe a day or two at most.
It took 3 years to move and remove the poles on the stretch f Cranberry Hwy in Wareham that was re -designed. It's not uncommon to see a portion of an old pole bolted to a new pole. Being monopolies, utilities have no incentive to do better.
I took nearly 3 years for the poles to move in Ashland MA on rt 135. Only recently did the cables get cheeky workaround which cut the poles and suspended the wires.
I am assuming perhaps this time Next year it Might be done.
How soon? Days?, Weeks? Months? Years? Decades? Centuries?
Well, the problem really is that reduce. The sidewalk poles were existing their and one hand didn’t talk to the other properly knows gonna take at least two years if not longer.
I've never heard of verizon owning poles that also carry electricity.
Usually it's the power company's pole that let's Verizon attach to it.
It's ridiculous, but there is a greenway that runs parallel to that road its entire length that has access points all along. Even if the poles were removed it's the better way to cycle that area.
This is the work of subcontractors who got paid a lot and don't care about quality.
Well at least I know the government is still clueless about what is actually going on. I was worried for a second that the government was actually doing a good and professional job
Polls were there first. Obviously they planned to move the poles at some point; it should have been done before before they paved and painted the bike lane. Probably the power company is delaying moving the poles because it costs them money they don't have. The poles look old enough that they should be replaced anyway.
Utility pole transfers are done be the attachees from top to bottom. Telephone is last unless they are underground.
Yup, electric has to be moved first. Some of those poles still have streetlights on them. That's electric. Nothing can happen until they're moved. I used to work on a crew doing pole transfers. If the other lines were out of the way we'd go all the way down that street in a single day, with ladders.
Honestly this just goes to show people that this road in particular isn’t big enough to accommodate a bike line. Majority of cities or towns road infrastructure isn’t big or flexible enough. I say use an available till a solution gets figured out.
It's like a child that does dishes deliberately poorly so the parents, or in this case the tax payers ask them to quit.
Completely absurd. You won't get joined up planning and design if different private companies are responsible for different parts of public infrastructure. All the extra bureaucracy involved, waiting for corporations to do something that will inevitably cost them money for little benefit. It's no wonder they put off doing things like this, there's no incentive for Verizon to move the poles. Even though this situaton is clearly ridiculous, at least there will be pressure on them now that the bike lane has been built.
The city could use eminent domain. They use it all the time to force home owners out to use for government and commercial interests. They can do it to these poles as well.
The poles are being moved, and the lane is clossed. This isn't news. Look at them they don't have any wires on them. They have to wait for all the company with wires on the pole to move them before they can be pulled.
Looks like Massdot needs to fire the project manager! Looks like we like to burn money on repaving the bike lane.
Ever source is so full of it, they don’t have to wait for anyone. They are the first to move their equipment.
Just like the signs that get installed in the middle of sidewalks or sidewalks built with poles in the middle instead of around the side of poles, both forcing people pushing strollers or using wheelchairs out into the vehicle traffic.
Verizon No line before 9.00 AM nothing new after 3.00 PM
How embarrassing, a lawmaker needs to fine these selfish compaines.
I’ve not be traveling on that road for too long but the past few years I have been that road is ALWAYS under construction.
Why they not put the power lines *UNDER* the bike lane? It could be soooo easy! 😂 But typical thirth world countries, only corruption... 🙄🤦♂️
What idiot dreamt that up? I do not trust drivers to respect bikers even if bike lanes are clearly marked. Biking alongside traffic is very dangerous, and utility poles in the centre of lanes just makes cyclists more likely to have an accident!
You can use that brain that got you a college degree and use the sidewalk.
@@mikejones9906Cant legally use the sidewalk.
Seems youre the idiot here
@@mikejones9906that's incredibly dangerous for any pedestrian walking along the sidewalk too. There's a reason bikes should not be riding in the sidewalk and we should have separate right of way for each mode.
@@mikejones9906 why? it's not a sideRIDE.
They still gotta move the poles you goofy! That asphalt is the base layer. SMH people are incompetent to not be able to figure that out
And this is exactly why the government is hated. Profound incompetence and apathy.
And yes utility companies are technically private but they’re also heavily subsidized and legal monopoly so they’re basically government
MassDOT is a money sink. I hope someone has been bribed and it is not just stupidity.
@@eukaryon I think every states dot department is excellent at wasting money, it's been true in every state I have lived in
Someone needs to loose their job. There should have been no doing this project until the utilities were moved. Utility companies do not have unlimited resources. Projects take time. So why was their not any co ordination? The people want to go after the utlity companies right away instead of those who planned this in the first place makes me laugh.
Some one needs a medal! Pole company: "Why do we need to remove the poles? There is no bikelane?" Now there is and they HAVE to move them. At their cost! Including reparing the holes. Taxmoney saved!
“We’re from the government and here to help”
Never heard of verizon owning a power pole that carries electricity.
Usually it's the other way around.
No one in government ever faces accountability for wasting money.
Look, I agree that this is silly, but at least the new poles are in place and the old poles WILL be removed as soon as the lines are moved over. This is really more of a planning fail than a project fail.
We have asomething like that here in Toront. Its been like this for at least a decade they're still waiting for the the hydro companies to movethier lines the hydro companies say they can not moe the lines because the telecom companies own te poles and that they filed for approval to move the lines a decade ago. They figure it might be done by 2125 under the current project plan.
They gonna move em bro. But they allow utilities to much leeway
They should fine the companies involved 100 billion dollars per second for every second they delay getting the job done and give them a deadline and if the job isn't complete then the fine goes up to 200 billion per second and so on also the Ceos of the companies should be immediately arrested and held in jail until the job is done. Its time to stop playing around with these idiots.
“Looks like there’s a lot of this going around.”
👉👈
🤨🤨🤨
Mass Dot is too busy putting cones down on 90% of the pike at 3 am with close to no work being done.
That is one of the BIGGEST FAILURES i have ever seen. WTF?! They will have do a bunch of patches to the road that will always be a weak point to the surface of the road.
Why does the word corruption come to my mind?
Do bikes pay excise taxes, inspections, tolls, insurance? Asking fora friend. Oh Oh.
The efficiency of the private sector strikes again
The funding for bike path comes from a budget . The money allocated must be used before the end of fiscal year. If they didn’t put them in now, there’s no guarantee that the money would be allocated again the following year. Putting the cart before the horse ensures the bike lane was built. The poles WILL be removed, but nothing is ever good enough or fast enough for these so called “advocates” is it?
Not when it takes years to get the poles removed, then snow plow drivers will just dump snow mountains on the bike lanes/sidewalks
Well they are not fit for purpose.
They could have temporarily borrowed a car lane for the bike lane.
Put the wires underground, like in civilised countries.
It'll be about its been days? Probably 2 years.
Poles have the right of way.
People just can't complain enough can they? Cyclists especially but this comment section is just as bad. MassDOT spent 22million on this street project and built new bike lanes. And, essentially, you're all complaining because the project isn't done yet? What nonsense. "Why didn't they move the poles first?" OK, so you wanted them to wait with the entire project until the poles are moved so that cyclists aren't confused? That makes no sense. The street is done, the utility work is behind, you aren't going to delay the project for a bike lane and the contractor that paved the street isn't going to wait around for the utilities to figure their lives out. So you have the contractor finish the work they're paid to do and you have the utilities patch the holes they make when they take the poles down. Simple, easy, done.
Just fine all the companies with wires on the poles a million dollars a day until they move all the wires
Looks like something I’d see in Mexico
i bet they will not move them and they will stay right where they are
You spent all this time to produce a piece for an incomplete project.
Yeah, the pole are in the way because the utility crews haven’t moved the lines off the poles yet.
We waited 4 years for Eversource and Verizon to remove their poles from a project in New Bedford over seen by MassDOT.
Great! city planning should be fired.
No critical thinking here! This is a lawsuit waiting to happen!
Never underestimate the power of government to f-k up something simple.
"We'll fix it in post"
Upside down land 🙃. Cant imagine the line up of idiocy that thought this was a job well done.
These people went to college viewers. I don't know any better with my measly high school diploma...
So was it the bike lane being put in first then the poles or the other way around? I'm thinking the more inward poles are the older ones and have probably been there for decades at least. So then why make the bike lane there at that point when it's being made into an unsafe situation? Should of simply waited till they took out the poles.
The last sentence of your comment is spot on.
Move the utilities then start the DOT work, but the "experts" know better than you and I
Lawsuit incoming!
The real question is, who will be financially liable WHEN someone gets hit by a car? Cuz c'mon, its gonna happen.
The person driving the car?
The utilities should have moved everything to the new poles before the paving was started. More proof ya can’t fix stupid.
22 mil and this is the result.
Looks like it's actually Verizon that's being lazy hear.
Tell me you’re in a blue state without telling me you’re in a blue state. SMH. 🤘♾️☮️♾️🇺🇸
Nothing a chainsaw can't fix
Your tax dollars at work, people. Vote smarter.
its 2024 why are they still using poles is bigger question
Couldn't make this up