Day 68-Day72; Some ?'s Answered

Ok, need a quick summary? Here ya go:

Friday Day 68: Some Rain....water main installation on New Castle; they only worked until noon. They did stub out for the main on Charing Cross.

Saturday/Sunday Day 69-70: Contractor Off and gone home

Monday Day 71: Rainy, but a bit of work was completed. The 3 residential water services on Roxbury got completed. Concrete contractor had a few staff in Village doing some miscellaneous work.

Tuesday Day 72: Rain again both today but overnight we had rain as well. Soils are too difficult to work in. Some maintenance work will be performed to assure storm water and erosion control are being taken care of.

I had a resident email me with a couple questions which they thought might be helpful to blog about; and I agree. I will try to be brief:

Question:
If we start parking on a side street during construction, do we need to do anything special so we can leave the cars on the street overnight? Do we need to display anything in the window?

Answer:
No, you really dont. During the period of road and infrastructure, we are not issuing parking tickets to those cars that are forced onto the street to park. In some cases, you may not be able to get to your driveway, or, maybe you have chosen to park outside the active construction zone. This exception does not exist in locations where there is not construction.

Question:
I know the construction workers are probably watching out for kids as best they can, but what do you recommend I tell my kids so they cross through the construction zone safely (either on foot or on their bikes)? Should they try to make eye contact with the equipment operator? Find someone to help them through? Just make a run for it? Any advice you (or the contractors) can provide would be very helpful.

Answer:
First, avoid just making a run for it--darting into traffic or around a work zone is not safe. Never assume that the equipment operators can see you; in fact, assume the opposite. Trying to make eye contact is good and we have found these operators are keenly aware of their surroundings, but never assume things are safe. The operators will give you way.
Remember that the active work zone is limited to a fairly small area but you can still have equipment moving about. Encourage your child to take the most direct route to get out of the active construction zone. Let say you live on McBride, and they are working on McBride or New Castle, you may want to have your kids go down to LeRoy and the then to Del Mar, Lakewood and down to the Beach. Or, take Magdeline to Butternut and over to Farwell. There should be several routing options available, especially since there is only one pipe crew for the time being.
If you have taught your children good pedestrian habits, and, assuming they practice them, they should be fine. Reinforce to them that they should avoid getting in the way. It is ok to watch, but do so from a safe distance.

For Wednesday, the Road Crew will be reconstructing Roxbury, starting near the intersection with Lakewood. Because of several factors influencing that crew, they may be starting a bit earlier in the morning. There are a few miscellaneous tasks for the pipe crew to work on in the lower bluff, but ideally they will then resume water main installation on New Castle.