Recently, my street, Laurie Avenue, was repaved along with a couple of side streets off of it. The contractor, LaRusso Construction, did a very good job.

For certain neighborhoods when streets get repaved, a question comes up from people new to the neighborhood wondering why a street in a neighborhood was not repaved while others were, even though it looks like it needs it.

That is because the street is not a public but a private one. There are a couple in my neighborhood. You can tell a private road in Boston by its sidewalks or lack of sidewalks. You can have streets where part of the street is private and another is public.

Morrell Street is an example of such a street. The public part is between the intersection of Morrell & Laurie and Morrell & Belle Ave while the other part where the Boston Elks is located is a private road. Like many private roads it has been a private road for decades.

In terms of road maintenance, a private road means the City of Boston is not responsible for maintaining it. The property owners of a private street have to pay to have that street paved. More than a few of my neighbors have learned about private streets because of Morrell Street. It is a bumpy ride down that street.

That street does have public-looking sidewalks thanks to Elks, the Arabic Evangelistic Baptist Church, and the single-family homes that replaced the DPW yard when they came to be built. When the church several years ago presented its plan to the West Roxbury Neighborhood Council, a number of us were skeptical of the sidewalk design. The sidewalk design the Church said would allow a few cars to park to park in front of it. It turned out the Council members were correct in that we thought it will eventually lead to angle parking narrowing the street during services.

I do not want to make the Elks or the Church to be bad stewards of the street. I know at least in the past there has been a strained relationship between the two over parking. In a perfect world, since they own a large part of the street, they should work together on sharing the cost on getting that section of Morrell Street repaved. Just a thought on my part.

In the past when the City of Boston has done surveys, I have expressed the opinion that something should be done on some of these private roads especially if they are private roads that are main roads for people used to enter or leave a neighborhood. I have also mentioned this to City Councilors in the past. The trouble there is not an easy answer.

Yes, there is a way to make a street a public one but that is often a long process that has to start with a large majority of property owners wanting the street to become a public one.

Stephen Smith

West Roxbury

Advertisement