Thursday, May 19, 2011

An update to the Segway situation

As we discussed yesterday, there is a second company looking to bring Segway tours to Salem. Today, former Salem Patch reporter John Zorabedian sheds some more light on the situation.

As we noted yesterday, there seems to be some friction between Salem Seggliders and the city. The story today would confirm this. One of the Seggliders employees even went as far as accusing to city of playing favorites. A battle may be brewing.

As we also told you yesterday, the company had been advertising that their location would be 10 Blaney Street. Yes, their Yelp page still lists this as their address. The Patch piece also confirms this, and illuminates the fact that their may be some city opposition to this. At a minimum, though it has been advertised, it hasn't been approved. It sounds like they won't be able to operate their without a fight. Having reviewed the blueprints for the rebuilt pier, I have to say that they shouldn't allow them to teach people how to ride these things on the pier. Every inch of width of this space is being put to use to the point that the former pedestrian walkway, outside of the parking spaces, is being moved to the center section of the pier, passing directly behind the parking spaces on the water side. Beware walking, and beware backing out of those spaces. Having people zooming around learning how to ride Segways, which travel as fast as 12.5 MPH is not a good idea at all. Take a look at the setup below. (Click on it if you need to blow it up) If we put the pedestrians in the middle, because we needed the full width for parking, do you really think there is room to let Segway beginners zip around? Note that the wide section to the bottom left will remain gravel. The paving starts about where the pedestrian walkway enters from the left, and continues right about across that line.

Green is parking, red is the walkway

As a resident of the area, I won't tell you what I think of the "Approximate location of future pay station" notations on the map.

I took a peak at the West Coast Video location last night. While there has definitely been activity there in the last few days, it doesn't exactly look ready to start bringing customers in. Also, where will they teach people to ride these at that location? I stand by my opinion from yesterday that it appears that there may be some real kinks for these people to work out to really be up and running.


A RELATED NOTE: I was saddened to hear that John Zorabedian won't be writing for Salem Patch anymore. His pieces have been some of their best real news reporting. I fear that I may have been right when I predicted that Patch news coverage might soon suffer from a change in direction from the very top of the organization. I've noticed in the last week or so, an increase in fluffy pieces (they even ran a press release as a news story) and "photo essays." I'm hoping they'll prove me wrong, with a meaty article on the meeting between the school committee and city council committee of the whole last night on school construction budgeting. Simply, there's too much news in Salem for one reporter to cover.


1 comment:

  1. Hey, at least they bothered to rent a space instead of trying to just driving them off the ferry.

    ReplyDelete

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