The city of Boston has issued about 4,000 tickets since the first blizzard of the year to people who failed to shovel their sidewalks, but on many roads, pedestrians still scurry alongside cars on the street, because the sidewalks are narrow, icy, or blocked by towering snowbanks.
“It’s terrible, the piles are like 15 feet high,” said Mary Burke as she walked down L Street in South Boston on Friday afternoon, trying to avoid the cars that whizzed by her. The sidewalk she had eschewed was partially cleared for a couple hundred feet, but ended abruptly with a long and slippery uneven stretch that had clearly been stamped down by feet, instead of cleaned out with shovels.
“The mayor’s trying the best he can. It’s just one snowstorm after another,” said Burke.
Bonnie McGilpin, spokeswoman for Mayor Martin J. Walsh, said in an e-mail that no city officials were available for an interview on the issue of sidewalks and pedestrian safety Friday. In the e-mail, she said property owners are responsible for clearing their own sidewalks, and that “the city is actively enforcing snow violations.”
McGilpin said residents are encouraged to report sidewalks that haven’t been cleared through the Citizens Connect app or by calling 617-635-4500. The snow violation tickets were issued to residents and commercial property owners who failed to clear their sidewalks.
But as Melissa Sidoti made her way down the middle of M Street Friday afternoon, she said she didn’t even try to walk on the sidewalks in her neighborhood. Friday was the first time she dared to put in her earbuds, she said, because of the fear that she would not see an oncoming car — she has already had one close call.
“There is no sidewalk,” Sidoti said, pausing to take a picture of a Chevrolet completely encased in a 10-foot high snowbank. “In South Boston, I literally feel like we’re the red-headed stepchild of Boston.”
In some areas, residents said neighbors had been good about digging out. Claire Dargan, who belongs to the St. Botolph Neighborhood Association, said in an e-mail that the first few hours after each storm, it was a challenge to get around, but that most sidewalks ended up shoveled out — if very narrow. The real challenge, she said, is the intersections, because pedestrians have to walk out onto the road because the corners are blocked.
“We are concerned about our kids especially with the height of the snowbanks,” she said. “Visibility and tempers are bad these days and we all have to walk onto the road at most intersections where no one claims the corners to sweep.”
In the South End, said Betsy Hall, president of the Ellis South End Neighborhood Association, sidewalks were well taken care of, but pathways from the sidewalks to the streets were narrow and unshoveled. Still, she said in an e-mail, “the only people I have seen walking in the street are those who are impatient about using the pathway accesses from sidewalk to street.”
In a press release Friday, city officials said the Boston Public Works Department had removed 1,650 truckloads of snow from across Boston's neighborhoods overnight.
“Crews have been working around the clock to remove what has been a historic amount of snow in the City of Boston,” read the release. Boston has gotten more than 8 feet of snow since Jan. 23, making this the second-snowiest winter on record.
The February school break ends Monday, and as students return to school, the School Department has focused on ensuring that sidewalks are safe, McGilpin said in her e-mail.
About 70,000 students take the MBTA to school, according to T spokesman Joe Pesaturo, and the embattled agency, which has spent much of the past several weeks running only partial service or completely shut down due to the weather, expects to have all segments of the transit system operational except the Mattapan Trolley Line.
“The clearing of snow from bus stops is proceeding at a good pace, and service will be more reliable as road conditions continue to improve,” said Pesaturo in an e-mail. “The MBTA encourages students and their parents to check mbta.com’s section designed specifically for BPS students.”
In South Boston, residents seemed resigned to dealing with narrow streets, frozen cars, and spotty sidewalk access for the foreseeable future, as another storm bears down on the city this weekend.
Kathleen McDonnell paused as she shoveled out her car on Seventh Street for the fourth time this winter. She doesn’t plan to drive it anywhere — the battery is dead from the cold — but with the possibility of snow and freezing rain in the next few days, she figured she should at least unearth it.
“It’s just, there’s nowhere to put the snow,” she said.
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Evan Allen can be reached at evan.allen@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @evanmallen.