“This seems like work that should have been done off-peak, not when lots of people are walking to work/bus stops”

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by Prince Of Petworth — March 7, 2016 at 4:00 pm 8 Comments

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Photo by PoPville flickr user nevermindtheend

“Dear PoPville,

Aren’t there better safety procedures for cutting large branches over a busy sidewalk? (Southbound Connecticut Ave & Leroy Place) This seems like work that should have been done off-peak, not when lots of people are walking to work/bus stops. Also, there was no advance warning for those walking north on Connecticut Ave – so people walked in the street rather than having a lengthy backtrack.”

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DC1

Not to mention they keep working during rush hours, essentially closing 2 traffic lanes and making it a mess to drive around that area.
crin

They’re trimming elms all over the city. They have a short window in which to do this, due to Mother Nature so they probably need all the hours of daylight they can get. Tree trimming is dangerous work. You can’t hire just anybody to increase your manhours and trimming trees overnight is not possible. It is what it is for this short temporary window.
- nevermindtheend
  
  Two things:
  1. I agree that it’s dangerous. As such, shouldn’t they be required to put up more than a cone to keep people out of the affected area of sidewalk?
  2. Since permits for this go through DDOT, couldn’t DDOT require that work on snow emergency routes be done off-peak? They could still do work on trees on smaller roadways during rush hours.
Shaw

Would you rather they come out in the middle of the night and keep the immediate neighbors awake? Not to mention the extra cost on our tax dollars for paying DC employees to work late hours or weekends. This is one of the things you deal with living in a city. There are deserted, quite sidewalks in the burbs if you’re concerned about these types of things.
- nevermindtheend
  
  I would rather they use basic safety measures when they do this. A single cone one one side means people could easily walk into the area where branches are falling. Not putting up a sign at the start of the block means pedestrians walk into (rush hour) traffic on Connecticut Ave because backtracking would take so long.
MK32

I’ll do you one better. A few weeks ago they were trimming branches on the south side of L St between 15th & 16th (closer to 16th, on the side of the Hilton), right across the street from the WaPo building demolition. They did it during morning rush hour but didn’t post signs at the 15th st end of the block that the sidewalk is closed, so both sides of the street were closed but you didn’t know it until you were already 3/4 of the way down the block. With no signs posted, pedestrian traffic (that was already heavy due to one side of the street being closed) either had to turn around and walk an extra three blocks to get around it, or cross the street in the middle of traffic to get to the open portion of the sidewalk past the other construction (which most people did).
reality

Umm… Welcome to living in a city. Sometimes it means you use a different sidewalk.
- textdoc
  
  No need to be dismissive.
  .
  If nothing else, it sounds like the signage was lacking/incorrectly placed — it should’ve been at the nearest intersections on each side, so that pedestrians could use the crosswalk to switch to the opposite side of the street.

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