Snow clearance: my view (and queries) from my wheelchair

By Amy Hunt/South End resident

I’m a wheelchair-using paraplegic. Over the next few months, you may spot me on the streets, in traffic, traveling alongside cars, cabs, buses, trucks and Ubers. It’s risky, but it’s where the City of Boston puts me after it snows.

After a storm, the plows push mounds of snow onto street corners, covering curb ramps—the slopes at the end of sidewalks that make it possible for wheelchair users to cross the street. Without curb ramps, I’m going nowhere. So I make my way into traffic.

And I have questions.

The Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) mandates curb ramps. But does the ADA have an opinion about ramps getting covered by four feet of snow?

The City expects residents who live closest to street corners to clear the snow piles it creates when contractors plow the street. According to Boston.gov, corner residents have three hours after a storm ends to get it done. That doesn’t consider the possibility of a 72-year-old Aunt Mae living in the corner property.

Snow piles can grow to four, five, even six feet tall and wide. Even if Aunt Mae can afford to pay someone to clear snow all winter, can the piles really be moved by a human with a shovel? Moved to where exactly?

These types of questions knock around my head while I travel in traffic. And another: If I get flattened out here, whom do my survivors take it up with? The Aunt Mae rule would appear to indemnify the City. But it’s never been tested.