Winter Walking and Cycling

[danbrotherston]

How exactly does the proactive enforcement work? Are these 4 officers specific to sidewalk clearing or are they regular bylaw officers who now have the authority to proactively enforce snow clearing requirements, as opposed to reacting to resident complaints? How much of their workday involves being out patrolling for unclear sidewalks?

I no longer work for by-law, so I don't know this to be fact, but this is my guess:

In the spring/summer/fall months we have trail bike units that patrol the parks and do parking by-law on their travels.  In the winter/spring/fall time, they are responsible for school zone enforcement, and misc parking by-law enforcement outside of school hours. 

I would assume these officers will be doing the proactive enforcement as they traverse the city going from school to school.

Coke

The report specifically talked about hiring new officers, on a temporary basis in winter. It is definitely not the case that existing officers are doing pro-active enforcement, those officers are already at capacity dealing with complaints, which often result in days (or weeks) long backlogs of complaints about uncleared sidewalks to investigate.

Sorry Coke, I know bylaw officers are trying, but generally I find bylaw enforcement pretty ineffective for things like parking and sidewalk clearing.

[Coke6pk]

I no longer work for by-law, so I don't know this to be fact, but this is my guess:

In the spring/summer/fall months we have trail bike units that patrol the parks and do parking by-law on their travels.  In the winter/spring/fall time, they are responsible for school zone enforcement, and misc parking by-law enforcement outside of school hours. 

I would assume these officers will be doing the proactive enforcement as they traverse the city going from school to school.

Coke

The report specifically talked about hiring new officers, on a temporary basis in winter. It is definitely not the case that existing officers are doing pro-active enforcement, those officers are already at capacity dealing with complaints, which often result in days (or weeks) long backlogs of complaints about uncleared sidewalks to investigate.

Sorry Coke, I know bylaw officers are trying, but generally I find bylaw enforcement pretty ineffective for things like parking and sidewalk clearing.

No offense... I don't work in by-law anymore.

All I can say is *I* was effective in parking & noise when I was there....  

Coke

[danbrotherston]

The report specifically talked about hiring new officers, on a temporary basis in winter. It is definitely not the case that existing officers are doing pro-active enforcement, those officers are already at capacity dealing with complaints, which often result in days (or weeks) long backlogs of complaints about uncleared sidewalks to investigate.

Sorry Coke, I know bylaw officers are trying, but generally I find bylaw enforcement pretty ineffective for things like parking and sidewalk clearing.

No offense... I don't work in by-law anymore.

All I can say is *I* was effective in parking & noise when I was there....  

Coke

I don't mean to say that individuals officers are not effective, I mean to say that the policy and system of enforcing bylaws like parking and snow removal is not effective.

Basically, when a person can park in a bike lane and 99.99% sure they won't receive a 35 dollar parking ticket, enforcement is not one of the factors dictating whether this person parks in the bike lane or not.

[danbrotherston]

City of Waterloo is expanding enforcement slightly for unclear sidewalks.

https://www.therecord.com/news/waterloo-...walks.html

"Extra enforcement will be achieved by adding another part-time bylaw officer and by extending winter enforcement another month to four months per year."

It's such a joke, apparently they only did enforcement for 3 months. Why do they even pretend that they are enforcing the bylaw. I'm so tired of this bullshit.

Props to City of Waterloo staff for this ballsy comment here:

"...residents can move faster to clear away snow, that residents typically achieve better results..."

This was conclusively proven false by the city of Kitchener study yet they are still willing to make this claim...absurd!

This is a bizarre feeling, like, I'm in some sort of Lewis Carroll book.

[danbrotherston]

Well, winter is off to a bang, and the reality of our uncleared sidewalk comes crashing back down.

How does our city council allow this to continue?!

[creative]

My wife and I just got back from a 3.5km walk through our neighborhood. Of the hundreds of properties that we passed we encounter a total of 2 unshovelled sidewalks. Both of which were rental properties which appeared to be owned by absentee landlords.

[danbrotherston]

My wife and I just got back from a 3.5km walk through our neighborhood. Of the hundreds of properties that we passed we encounter a total of 2 unshovelled sidewalks. Both of which were rental properties which appeared to be owned by absentee landlords.

Exactly, in neighbourhoods where most properties are owner occupied, most sidewalks are clear. If you walk up Weber St. where theres vastly heavier pedestrian traffic, but most buildings are not owner occupied, sidewalks are never cleared, not once through the whole winter.

The policies implemented by council are completely broken when it comes to transportation, but they work just fine for folks who want to walk in their residential neighbourhood--which lets well off pols (and well off residents) pretend the system works just fine.

Now I don't care that mostly "absentee landlords" don't clear their sidewalks, I care that the sidewalks are clear. We need to, as a society, stop focusing on fault--who to blame, and start focusing on solutions which actually focus on outcomes rather than "solutions" which try to focus on the "problem". In this specific example, bylaw enforcement is a "solution" only in that it is focused on those that people feel are to blame, rather than the solution of city sidewalk clearing which is focused on the outcome of having clear sidewalks (and to a more general extent, equity in mobility).

This isn't just an opinion, the city's study demonstrated that city clearing was extremely effective at improving the conditions of sidewalks, while also demonstrated empirically that bylaw enforcement did not improve the condition of sidewalks. Yet we are spending money on bylaw enforcement not city clearing.

[catarctica]

I needed to walk somewhere yesterday and the sidewalk was barely paved in both Kitchener/Waterloo. I’d have been okay except there were road shoveling vehicles piling more snow on the sidewalk. Being a pedestrian feels like a second class citizens here based on the priority.

[KevinL]

Ironically, the one non-cleared stretch I encountered this morning was city-maintained. They also had not cleared the multi-use path connected to it (disappears to the left of image).

   

[danbrotherston]

Ironically, the one non-cleared stretch I encountered this morning was city-maintained. They also had not cleared the multi-use path connected to it (disappears to the left of image).

Where is this?

[KevinL]

Strasburg by the Hydro corridor (just off Selkirk).

[jamincan]

The Stanley Park Community Centre also hadn't cleared their sidewalk on Franklin when I ran by this evening.

[Bob_McBob]

The rain that froze everything up a few days ago has really highlighted the problem houses for sidewalk clearing in my area. When this house doesn't clear properly, every single pedestrian entering the neighbourhood has to walk in the street.

[ijmorlan]

The rain that froze everything up a few days ago has really highlighted the problem houses for sidewalk clearing in my area. When this house doesn't clear properly, every single pedestrian entering the neighbourhood has to walk in the street.

This week’s weather is likely to lead to trouble. It will be near 0 the whole time, but not consistently either above or below 0, so snow will melt and then freeze into solid ice. Right now my sidewalk is entirely clear because I shovelled it again while it was above 0 after clearing the bulk of the snow off earlier; then it melted down to nothing. I’m keeping a close eye on the forecast to decide when to clear — no point in clearing 2cm off if it’s cold and more is about to fall; but definitely worthwhile clearing if the alternative is for that 2cm to melt and re-freeze into an ice sheet.

[tomh009]

Can't just blame it on the weather (until now, at least). Walking on Ahrens St yesterday, from Young to Queen, the sidewalks were nice and clear, except for a stretch of three consecutive houses where they were treacherously icy. Unless it had been a highly localized ice storm, the only other explanation is a group of delinquent homeowners.