Residents Sound Off On Private Alleyways

Dozens of South End residents arrived at City Hall on Wednesday evening armed with hand-drawn maps, detailed statements and photocopied checks. The hearing, which focused on the issue of private alleyways in Boston neighborhoods, was the first opportunity many had to share their troubles with city, which assumes no responsibility for the upkeep and general maintenance of private ways.

“The distinction between these public and private alleys is really without a difference,” said Steve Fox from the Rutland Square Neighborhood Association. “We have all the responsibilities of maintaining a private alley as a public way with none of the rights.”

For Fox and many others, maintaining private alleys has become a laborious and often costly task that requires collecting funds from neighbors to pay for repairs to aging infrastructure.

“It’s never paid by everyone who abuts the alley, it’s paid by a select few,” said Union Park Neighborhood Association President Jerry Frank.

Union Park is bordered by a public alley, which is well-maintained, and Ivanhoe Street, which is a private alley and riddled with potholes, he said.

“A wheelchair could not get down that alley from either side,” he said. “We’re going to have to go out and collect private funds to make it safe. Not pretty, safe.

Some the most expensive debates over private ways have occured when private sewers, laid underneath private alleyways, become faulty and require repair. Appleton Street residents in attendance at Wednesday’s hearing described rising tensions between neighbors during a recent sewer line repair. One resident said she received a cryptic note asking her to deliver a $1,000 check to a neighborhood group or risk being disconnected from the sewer line.

According to James Steinkraus, deputy general counsel for the Boston Water and Sewer Commission, there’s nothing the city can do to help residents who utilize a private sewer line underneath a private alley where no traffic is allowed (the Appleton Street alley is one of these cases). Otherwise, the city offers a program whereby abutters can decide to switch to a public sewer line underneath a private way open to traffic – and shoulder 75 percent of the construction costs.

Meanwhile, converting a private alleyway into a public way – and passing on maintenance responsibility to the city – is so expensive it borders on impossible, said Fox. In order to make the switch, a roadway must meet all current design standards beginning with a minimum width of 34 feet, which would require moving telephone poles and cutting down trees.

“Today, it is impossible for anybody to convert a private alley into a public alley, it just can’t happen,” he said. “When we did the estimates they were between $600,000 and $800,000 [for] us and the city.”

Many public alleys don’t satisfy the width requirement either, because they were grandfathered into the system, said City Engineer Para Jayasinghe. The current requirements are mandated by the state.

District 2 City Councilor Bill Linehan, who filed the request for Wednesday’s hearing along with At-Large Councilor Felix Arroyo, suggested that the city look into altering the law to ease the burden on residents.

“We need to look into the law, look into what we as legislators can do to remove some of these bearings,” he said. “In this room, which is pretty full, there are as many people as there are issues that relate to private ways.”

Arroyo expressed similar sentiment.

“Right now we’re saying if you don’t have [34] feet, too bad. I wonder if there’s any appetite for the city to realize that it’s a tremendous quandary that we’re in?”