Winter Walking and Cycling

[danbrotherston]

I did speak to a bylaw supervisor. Their test is now whether or not the sidewalk is "passable." Hard-packed snow and ice seems acceptable. A sidewalk is also more likely to pass, it seems, if the property owner has "made an attempt" to clear or treat. As for the windrows blocking crosswalks, anything left by the plow on the street is the responsibility of City operations, anything left by the plow on the sidewalk is the responsibility of the homeowner. But the property owner won't be cited for not clearing in that case, particularly again if an attempt was made to clear.

In my opinion, this situation is a mess. In May or whenever council hears reports from staff on the issue, the message will be that 4,700+ properties were inspected, and only x% were found not to be passable. But that's not very meaningful without a clear definition of what "passable" means in practice. The standard laid out in the bylaw no longer applies. I don't really want to question the discretion of the bylaw officers. But, with a new standard that seems ill-defined, was adopted mid-season, and is not laid out anywhere for stakeholders to see, I think the data from the proactive enforcement project will be questionable.

Is this official?

Basically this means sidewalks are, as an official policy, closed for the season, windrows are impassible to many people, even someone with a stroller, if the city won't require property owners to clear it, the official policy MUST be that sidewalks are not open to the public in the winter.

Well, reason 10,001 why our bylaw is garbage.

And the "passable" metric is terrible, passible to whom?  Passable to my grandma with her walker, yeah, not likely.

Time for mass fucking protests!

By the way, can you bring this to twitter, so we can retweet it at our city councillors?