Winter Walking and Cycling

[the_councillor]

3. No city that does the clearing themselves has a bare-pavement standard.  Let me repeat that... no city that clears their sidewalks gets down to a point that's considered accessible by our own accessibility advisory committee.  They all have a packed-snow standard because they know it's not possible if the city does it.  I don't believe bare pavement is a reasonable standard either depending on weather events, but my point is, using accessibility as an argument for city-clearing is entirely fictitious. 

Just noticed this too.

I don’t know what the City of Waterloo’s official standard is for sidewalks that they clear, but I know that as a practical matter the sidewalks near me that are cleared by the city are down to the pavement most of the time. So all they need to do is run the same sidewalk plows on every sidewalk instead of just some sidewalks, and we will definitely have much better results than we do now, and at less cumulative cost over the entire population.

I’d appreciate if you would do us all the courtesy of discontinuing claiming that bare pavement is not done when it plainly is.

Also as I mentioned, I think just up-thread, the existence of some sidewalks already cleared by the city proves that it can work, and it does work better than each property clearing their own — there is no prediction or theory to be tested, just a straightforward observation of what is already happening. The question is, do I believe your words or my lying eyes?

You see, this is exactly what worries me; the expectation of service-level.  Yes, DT Waterloo and DT Kitchener etc. have a fantastic level of service.  And we can absolutely replicate that 'usually down to the pavement' city-wide... but that's an extremely costly level of service.  Far greater than even the ~5% tax increase of Ottawa-class service.  I'll confirm more precisely with staff when this comes back (because I understand you may not trust my words) but suffice-it-to-say we're talking an order of magnitude more expensive/km than anyone else that does this.

The belief is that people will wake in the morning after a snowfall and see spotless sidewalks like the downtown.  The reality is it will be two days later... and even then, will leave an inch of snow that might not be traversable by a stroller or wheelchair.