Winter Walking and Cycling

[danbrotherston]

The regional survey for the budget this year in fact suggested that the majority of people supported increasing taxes to improve services.

Both of the types of people you highlight must pay a private contractor to clear the snow around their condo building, as condo buildings provide these services at scale it's actually much cheaper than an individual homeowner, but still much more expensive than it would cost the city to provide those services.  So your example is terrible because in those cases, a city service would save BOTH people actual dollars, as opposed to just labor.


Or maybe, and just stay with me on this one...you could cut other regressive programs, like continually widening roads.

If you care so much about taxes, why did you not take issue with the enormous sums of money spent to rebuild Belmont Ave. as a 1960s era unnecessarily wide wasteful dangerous road?  Millions could have been saved, we could be half way to paying for sidewalk plowing, and yet, nobody even questioned the need for it.

- Firstly, if you could link me to that Regional survey I'd appreciate it.  I frankly have a hard time believing it, or it certainly isn't statistically significant (as the surveys I'm referring to are.)

- Which roads have we widened?  I can't speak for every ward, but in mine, over the last ~10 years, I can't recall the city widening a single one.  In fact, we cut Lorraine Ave. from 4 lanes to 2 to install cycling lanes.

- Further, whenever we redo a road, the majority of the reason (and more importantly in this context, the vast majority of the cost) is to replace the water/sewer infrastructure underneath.  Belmont Ave. is an ironic street to point out seeing as we just approved $350K during budget to reduce the lanes and install segregated cycling lanes instead.  Not sure you're helping your case here.

Yes, I came and spoke in support of that. Of course, if council had realized the road was overbuilt 3 years ago when the road was rebuilt, it wouldn't have cost us $350K.  And yes, the purpose was to reconstruct the sewers, but the result is that the entire road was rebuilt, it was an opportunity to save a great deal of money AND create a safer better street in our city.

The fact we are now spending money retrofitting those fixes in I don't think negates that--I think it exemplifies it.

But regardless...this is off track...

On topic, every sidewalk in the DTK clearing zone that I walked on today was entirely clear of ice and perfectly safe to walk on. Every sidewalk outside of that was a sheet of ice, and very dangerous.