Bushwacking on the Main South Sidewalks

For the uninitiated, these pictures of of the sidewalk on Walpole St in the Main South area of Worcester, MA. Walpole Street is an elevated street that runs parallel to the CSX train lines about 1 mile from Worcester Intermodal Terminal. Since it is an elevated roadway on side of the street is 30 feet or so above the three deckers behind it and the other sidewalk directly abuts the CSX lines.

Who is responsible to keep these sidewalks free of weeds that can be measured in yardsticks? The City of Worcester? CSX because they are an abutter? Certainly not the three decks that back up to it.

On Sunday afternoon I got geared up and thought a good pair of gloves would be enough to pull the weeds in a pretty timely fashion. However these prehistoric thistles and some other urban weeds were so thick and full of vigor I was no match. All I could do was sort of twist them up but the roots wouldn't budge on many of them. Those weeds need some serious industrial strength put to them to be toppled.

This street gets plenty of foot traffic to as people who live by the park cut over to Randall's Package Store the pizza place or convenience store. It is obvious that things like this get taken care of in other parts of the city, but certainly not in Main South, even though there are more people without transportation in this zip code than maybe any other in the city.

I will admit the city has been decent about acknowledging, but not necessarily acting upon requests I have submitted thru their online system.

On the bright side the University Park basketball court is painted and looks better than ever. Perhaps the DPW can come one block over and take care of these monster weeds.