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(Photo of Southborough sky in winter by Beth Melo)
I was wondering what others thought of the new traffic flow at the dump and swap shop location. It seems to me to be really inefficient – requiring a loop around the whole dump if you want to visit both recycling and the swap shop. No longer will I feel OK sending my kids to check out the shop while I manage our recycling because it will require them to cross a busy car path. I also question the ability to turn back into the dump area once you have left the recycling area, as it seems the curb is designed to deter this activity. Is this an attempt to phase out the swap shop like they tried to a few years back?
I would guess it is related to managing the separate stickers for recycling only vs full access.
No, that doesn’t make any sense at all. Swap Shop should come with either sticker. I don’t understand why they didn’t just give the entire old shed to the Swap Shop and move the DPW stuff into one of the three. The looping is crazy, there isn’t much parking for the new Swap Shop location, and I suspect there is a higher chance of accidents given the looping and the fact that people will leave their cars by the recycling and walk over to the Swap Shop once the weather changes. Add to all this the trucks coming in to remove full recycle containers and you have a trouble brewing. On a positive note, the shelves are awesome and really help to make sure more things get taken because they are displayed and not just piled up in boxes and bags. One final comment, there are 15 minute parking stickers by the new Swap Shop. Back with Karen proposed building the sheds during Town Meeting, one of her selling points was that there wouldn’t be a need to impose a time limit. That is my recollection at least. It should be on tape somewhere.
I am guessing that the desire to reroute the specific Swap Shap traffic was due to the problem with many “shoppers” lingering on busy days. This causes delays for all those residents wishing to either driver completely thru and out after the hopper drop, or park and do recycling. Yes, it means another loop around or walking over if you are dropping off items for SwapShop, but generally more residents use only the recycle and want to get in and out, then use the Swap Shop each week. So it makes a lot of good sense.
But let’s hope you don’t allow little kids to run over there unaccompanied. Maybe the kids should help you with the recycling? Good habits etc.
I love the new swap shop(s) !!! All that space and all those shelves! The shelves provide a safe place to put breakables that you no longer have a need for but are still worthy of use. My guess is that things will stay there rather than being removed to the hopper as they were before. Yes, the traffic flow is a bit awkward, but we’ll get use to it.
I haven’t seen the new layout. I did see a tweet from the DPW explaining that there are two new sheds. Do these appear to be the ones that were built by acid that ages ago? They always intended to make use of them.
Yes, the sheds have been there for sometime. They are now open and filling up quickly. I’m very glad to see them being put to good use. It always bothered me that people didn’t realise that their good stuff was ultimately being tossed in the hopper. And now, with all the shelving, the items being dropped off will be more “shop-able” LOL! I actually witnessed a resident arranging items on a shelf to resemble a store display, she was so moved by it all!
Did your spell check change Assabet to “acid that” ? Funny.
Yes it was meant to be Assabet!
I think that was a combination of a dictation problem and auto correct.