Recent comments in /f/baltimore

TheTransAgendaIsLove t1_j219aax wrote

Reply to Exterior sewage line out frozen (from 2nd floor) by NationalMyth

plumber here, exterior pipes can clog up easily when its cold because any trickle of water will freeze in the pipe same as how icecicles are made and itll keep growing till it plugs up the line with ice. you can get heat tape to try and deal with it but thats not guaranteed to work. the other problem is when the pipes are freezing cold and your using hot water the lines have a tendency to split right down the middle from the temperature change. if that happens you gotta replace it all.

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TheTransAgendaIsLove t1_j217b39 wrote

Reply to Water theft by sxswnxnw

a couple of years ago when i was doing service plumbing in baltimore i saw a house that had a huge water bill because the neighbors had connected a garden hose between the two homes hose bibbs to steal water because theirs had been turned off.

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planetarylaw t1_j20x8pe wrote

Reply to comment by metrawhat in Water theft by sxswnxnw

Oh god that is awful. Something similar happened to my neighbor a long time ago. Our apartment building had an outlet on the outside wall or something and neighbor got a crazy high bill. Turns out the auto shop next door was stealing electric that was connected to his unit.

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420EdibleQueen t1_j20nlnr wrote

Reply to Maryland paratransit service MobilityLink shows signs of improvement, but longtime users are skeptical: ‘We are the forgotten class’ by aresef

They couldn’t get much worse. A few years back my oldest was using mobility to get back and forth to school. She called her dad panicking because the ride was late, the pickup window kept getting pushed back, it had gotten dark and a snow storm rolling in with her waiting for them. We were both on the way home and calculated who could get there faster to get her. It was him. I sat in traffic on the phone with mobility giving them a piece of my mind. Over 3 hours past her original window and they were still saying another 30 minutes at least.

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metrawhat t1_j20kdcv wrote

Reply to Water theft by sxswnxnw

I had a friend in SoWeBo who suddenly had a huge water bill one summer. Turns out her neighbors backyard car detailing business had run a hose from her tap. They used THOUSANDS of gallons.

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moderndukes t1_j20eq0c wrote

Reply to comment by TerranceBaggz in Where to live in DC to commute to Baltimore? by Appropriate-Algae-82

Yes, I watch a number of urbanist channels on YouTube too. (I prefer City Nerd’s video more though.) Columbia does not have stroads.

> They have high speeds, the areas around them aren’t accessible via anything but a car, wide,highway sized lanes, long turn lanes, large signs meant to be seen from speeding cars

You’ve described a road or a highway - and in the video you linked to, those are the descriptors has had for roads and highways. It’s in the first like two minutes.

> constant traffic lights

Debatable for Columbia’s distances, and for the purpose of those lights primarily being for collectors intersections.

> and even destinations just off of them with massive parking lots between.

They don’t directly load onto the main parkways of Columbia, though. Nearly every one of the big box strip malls loads onto a side-road which then meets up with the parkways. Thus, that’s proper traffic hierarchy and not a stroad. If it was a stroad, all of the big boxes would load directly onto the parkways. See: your video.

Like really, the video you linked to has footage from undeniable stroads and nothing in and around Columbia looks like them. The closest is Town Center around the Mall, but that’s not even as clear cut as being “stroady.” Columbia could be called auto-oriented (although that does a slight disservice to the model for the villages being walkable), but it’s not stroady like Laurel, Silver Spring, College Park, Towson, etc.

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muddyhands78 t1_j207qgt wrote

Reply to Water theft by sxswnxnw

I’m a couple houses away from Patterson park and get folks filling bottles or splashing water on their faces a few times per summer. My next door neighbor also uses it for her plants every once in a while - we’re friendly so I consider it a “keep the peace” tax. I’ve shooed folks away if my dog is barking at them but otherwise don’t pay much attention to it, the usage is a literal drop in the bucket that has no impact on my bill. I winterize the spigot by shutting off the water and putting a cap over it.

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TerranceBaggz t1_j204a8t wrote

Reply to comment by moderndukes in Where to live in DC to commute to Baltimore? by Appropriate-Algae-82

I don’t think you understand what constitutes a stroad. Stroads definitely don’t have sidewalks off of them in many cases, including in MD. Houston and FLA are notorious for this type of stroad. The only thing most of the Stroads in Columbia don’t have is constant driveways intercepting the roadway. Everything else they have. They have high speeds, the areas around them aren’t accessible via anything but a car, wide,highway sized lanes, long turn lanes, large signs meant to be seen from speeding cars, constant traffic lights, and even destinations just off of them with massive parking lots between. All of these are “features” of stroads and all of them are things found in the major thruways in Columbia. It’s a suburb built around cars and Stroads. Sorry.

https://youtu.be/ORzNZUeUHAM

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