The East Coast has been hit, over the past weeks, with one winter storm after the other. One city that has been very affected by these storms is Boston. As Boston is currently being visited by the fourth winter storm in the past weeks, we here at RentHop thought we would take a deeper look at the trends in snow-related 311 complaints.
Key findings:
- There is a positive correlation between spikes in snow complaints and the Nor’easter visits in Boston, both for 2018 and 2017.
- From the four common 311 complaints related to snow, most Bostonians have been complaining about unshoveled sidewalks.
- The date with the most complaints in 2018, from 2/1/18 to 3/16/18, was 3/14/18 with 464 “Unshoveled Sidewalk” complaints.
- The date with the most complaints in 2017, from 2/1/17 to 3/16/17, was 2/14/17 with 818 “Unshoveled Sidewalk” complaints.
- From the selected timeframe, 2/1/17 to 3/16/17, there was a total of 9,362 complaints related to snow. For the same timeframe, just for 2018, there was a total of 2,166 complaints, which is a significant decrease in snow complaints from the year before.
The three past winter storms and their impact on the City of Boston
Knowing what we’ve read in the news, and with Boston being faced with another storm, we thought it would be interesting to see just how much damage in the form of 311 complaints these storms have gathered. 311 complaints, also known as service requests, are complaints made by the public. We took a closer look at the data set for the 311 service requests made in Boston, available to the public on www.data.boston.gov.
Looking at 2018, specifically February and March, we can quickly see that there is a positive correlation between increased snow complaints and the visits from the past three winter storms.
Looking at the graph above, it is clear and unsurprising that there has been an increase in 311 complaints, specifically in complaints named “Unshoveled Sidewalk” and “Request for Snow Plowing” on certain dates. The dates around the spikes in complaints also align with the dates of the winter storms. The date with the highest spike in complaints is on March 14, 2018, with 464 complaints. This correlates with when the third winter storm hit Boston. This leaves us curious about the number of 311 complaints regarding snow for the same timeframe for 2017.
One can see from the second graph that there are more spikes in complaints in 2017 than for 2018 but this is justified by the number of winter storms Boston had in the short, selected timeframe last year. Again, the spikes in this graph align with the dates and aftermath of the 2017 winter storms that hit Boston.
Numbers by neighborhood and street: Which area had it worst?
While it is clear from the graphs above that there was a significantly higher number of service requests last year in the selected time frame, we were still interested in seeing where the majority of the service requests came from this year. We sorted by complaints per every 100,000 people for the neighborhood. See results below.
When it comes to where the majority of 311 service requests came from, there seems to be a trend in which neighborhoods had the most complaints. Jamaica Plain, Dorchester, Roxbury, and Allston /Brighton were all ranked fairly high up for all four types of 311 service requests. We also took a closer look at which street names were the worst, ranked by the number of complaints received between 2/1/18 to 3/16/18.
