I've mentioned often (far more than necessary suggest some) that I spend a lot of time traipsing the sidewalks and pavement throughout our fair city. There's a different sense of place anyplace when you walk as opposed to driving or riding in a vehicle.
Between us, I'm not sure how similar or dissimilar bike-riding is to either walking or driving since I'm not the most coordinated cyclist you'll ever meet, though I do have the legs to rock bicycle shorts (even if no one else thinks so).
Walking across Norwich in the winter months has its own set of challenges, mostly weather-related to start with, ice and snow piling up on sidewalks and at intersections, and then human-related when clearing those sidewalks and walkways become an "I'd Just Rather Not" task for property owners, be they private, commercial, non-profit, and, in some cases, governmental.
You'd think it's part of being a good neighbor, taking care of your sidewalk and walkways, but if you're curious (and even if you're not), the city has an ordinance, Sections 19 through 19-4.1 and even a 'Frequently Asked Question' on the subject.
I always get embarrassed when we have directives, ordinances, and laws to tell us basically what we should have learned by third grade when it comes to sharing, taking turns, and looking out for one another.
It's like that old Petula Clark song where she sings/warns her lover, 'don't sleep in the subway, darling; don't stand in the pouring rain.' As a kid, I used to wonder what kind of guys she went out with that she had to tell them that.
Anyway, last week I watched a crew add a truncated dome to the sidewalk at Chelsea Parade South and Washington Street on the Chelsea Parade side. You see them on sidewalks everywhere; they're sometimes called detectable warning pavers. They're textured tiles that are part of the tactile paving that helps visually impaired pedestrians detect when they are about to leave the sidewalk and enter the street.
If you've stood at a corner of Chelsea Parade, any corner, be it with Washington Street or Broadway, it helps to have an extra heads-up so what I was watching happen was a very good thing.
Except, at the crosswalk of Chelsea Parade and Williams Street, as well as at the crosswalk on the far side with NFA at Crescent Street and even on the corner of Chelsea with Broadway facing Park Congregational Church, where truncated domes are already installed, all of them were partially or totally covered in ice and snow. This was three days after the snow and sleet had stopped.
And it wasn't just there, but on more than half the sidewalk crossings I tracked within a three-block radius of Chelsea Parade (because it's across the street from my house on Lincoln Avenue) where someone who could and should have cleared their sidewalk, including the truncated domes, decided it was just too much to ask, I guess.
Of course, if you were someone who depended on a cleared sidewalk and/or textured tile to get you safely to and from the grocer, or a health-care provider, or a friend's house, perhaps this lack of consideration for others would matter to you. But maybe, just maybe my point today is that it shouldn't always have to matter to you in order to matter to you.
-bill kenny
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