Winter Walking and Cycling

[danbrotherston]

Are you calling in sidewalks which caused you a physical inpidement?

Or ones with 0.2 mm of snow, “just to make a point” and screw over those who work 12 hours a day and can’t spend their entire life scraping down to the concrete?

I’m so sick of this because I genuinely make an effort to go out more than once during the day if I have to, even if I’m exhausted after work and still feel like I’m going to get screwed over by this arrangement because of life. Ugh.

Why can everyone not just pay $50/moth and the city do this?

Well, it's always a judgement call obviously.

I'm a physically able person, rarely do sidewalks prevent me from getting places (although there have been days, and certainly icy sidewalks are dangerous, I've had a few tumbles).

But I also have a coworkers in a wheelchair...he lives about 5 blocks away and in Summer, he wheels his wheelchair to work every day.  In winter, many many days he needs a coworker to come get him, sometimes he can manage to get to a bus stop..., but generally I'll call in any sidewalk that I don't think he'd be able to get through...

Keep in mind though, the bylaw is incredibly lax, not only would they probably not ticket for 0.2 mm of snow, or even 2.0 cm of snow, they won't ticket until 24 hours after no snow and not on weekends which in practice means at least 36 hours after snowfall--and they issue warnings, not tickets, at that time.

I call not to generate tickets, but to generate complaints. Staff two years ago, justified not doing city clearing (for 26 dollars, was their estimate), because it would result in more complaints than their current system.

A bit of history by the way, it was at least 4 years ago that this issue was first raised at council, where a staff report was to be produced, about the cost of such a program. That report took at least 1.5 years, and the result of it, was 26 dollars a household. Of course, that didn't go anywhere. About a year ago, staff started working on a pilot project. That hasn't gone anywhere. And this latest 4 years of literally spinning our wheels comes on the heels of years, probably decades of advocacy from GRAAC who have pretty much always raised this as an accessibility issue.

I really didn't even notice, until I sold my car and started walking more. Even when I did walk before, it was pretty much only on back-lot streets (city cleared) sidewalks, which are fine most of the winter.