Winter Walking and Cycling

[danbrotherston]

Walking this morning, it's pretty obvious that the City of Kitchener's tweaking to its enforcement of clear sidewalks has not worked. Not because most sidewalks are impassable- most are clear, as of Sunday, even after a significant snowfall. But the few that are not are the same ones that were not earlier this season (and never were, but rather left to the weather to address), and the same ones as last winter and the winter before.

To be clear... the move to proactive enforcement was applied to a small area in 2018 and did work according to staff's report.  Council decided to go with sidewalk snow-clearing pilot before making any final decisions.

First, the criteria which they said "it worked" was dubious at best.  It wasn't "the sidewalks were entirely clear", as is the ONLY relevant criteria.

Second, it was successful, except that people complained so much about being forced to maintain their sidewalks that staff stopped enforcing the cleared standard half way through, as reported by multiple independent sources, but not included in the staff report.

So, it wasn't successful in achieving clear sidewalks, but it was successful in achieving an uproar against clearing sidewalks.

As an addendum, it wasn't applied to "a small part" of the city, as you'll recall, as you voted on it (and for it I think), council required staff to implement full city enforcement...because certain councillors felt this was the right policy and didn't want to pilot it in a small area.

Of course, since enforcement of the entire city would be prohibitively expensive, only a small area was actually patrolled, which means there is actually no way to see how effective it was...but one thing is certain, if you actually want to patrol the whole city, costs are going to be far higher.

I sure wish you were aware of this.

Just an FYI: My new years resolution is to not mince words, your policies are broken and people are suffering. Stop pretending otherwise.