MACON, Ga. — People on Forsyth Street have complained of poor sidewalk conditions that are potentially dangerous. Many residents of the street are elderly or disabled and live in the St. Paul Apartments.
Others, like wheelchair-bound Bartow Irby, say just rolling down the street to get a sandwich can be a tough task. "It can really mess up your chair," Irby said. "It's just murder getting to the sandwich shop because there's a lot of holes, there's a lot of neglected cement."
Irby said because of parts of the sidewalk that jut out into the road, a person can potentially find themselves in front of cars. "There's no way to get around it, so suddenly, you've got to be in your best mode of driving to avoid going out into traffic," he said.
Chris Floore of Macon-Bibb Public Affairs said the county's SeeClickFix system is the best way to address road and sidewalk issues. The online system allows people to put in tickets that are sorted into the appropriate department to be fixed.
"Going that route allows us to track requests, it allows us to see how long its taken for us to respond, how long it takes us to inspect and how long it takes us to complete," Floore said.
Macon-Bibb County took 14,905 service requests in 2018 and closed 96 percent of them. The city was ranked 5th in the nation for Most Responsive Cities by SeeClickFix. Floore said most tickets can be resolved within the day.
13WMAZ asked about the Forsyth Street sidewalk Wednesday morning and an orange barrel was placed on the sidewalk outside Sid's Sandwich Shop by about 4 p.m. that afternoon.