Winter Walking and Cycling

[jamincan]

@thecouncillor: I want to say, I really appreciate that you are honestly willing to have a dialogue about issues and it's one of the things that I respect about you, even if I strongly disagree with you on this particular issue.

Fundamentally, the problem with snow clearing is that you either have a clear route, or you don't. If you have 50% of the route clear, it's only marginally better than having 100% of it uncleared. We already know that the existing program for clearing snow from sidewalks (through enforcement of bylaw standards and then city clearing of non-compliant properties) is not effective. Even with most residents being compliant, enough are not that the way is effectively impassable for a certain subset of the population such that wheelchair users are often forced to go onto the street with cars to get by. The mechanism we have to address this is slow and lenient such that it may be well over a week before anything is done (if it is addressed at all).

We know the City of Kitchener is failing to provide clear sidewalks for residents. I judge the effectiveness of you and the rest of council by how well the city fulfills its mandates and the money you are spending now is accomplishing next to nothing towards that goal. It's the definition of wasteful spending. I happen to think a municipal clearing program is the most efficient way for the city to meet its mandate but I'm open to other ideas that might work. I know that the existing program is wasteful and largely spending theatre to demonstrate that you are doing *something* rather than nothing (the worst kind of spending, in my book, by the way). I'm skeptical that the minor tweaks that are proposed to the existing program will fundamentally change it especially as they seem to do nothing to address the problems that have already been identified with the existing enforcement scheme.

One thing that I think the city could do better without necessarily spending more now is changing how they evaluate the situation. Current measures are deceptive. Just to use random numbers - 90% of properties clearing sidewalks seems much better than 75% being cleared. But is it really? Has accessibility actually improved for the people who need to use the sidewalk? You can't evaluate the situation by assessing each property individually. The reality is that one property that is non-compliant on a key route is a much bigger problem than a property at the end of a cul-de-sac. Properties on streets with bus routes are way more important than properties on less-busy streets with no bus routes. Evaluation should take this context into account as it actually tries to understand how the present situation affects accessibility which is the fundamental need that we are trying to serve.

I agree, and that's another reason city-clearing didn't make sense.  The data showed that even the $10M/yr City clearing option left 6% of sidewalks impassible!  Down from 15% in resident-cleared non-pilot areas.  $10M/yr to reduce the problem areas by 9% is neither effective nor efficient.

We also re-focussed proactive-bylaw on the priority routes.

And how is the city addressing the issue of by-law effectively being toothless due to the constant resetting of the clock meaning that a property can go a week with no clearing without the city taking any steps to resolve the problem? Proactive enforcement is meaningless if they can't enforce against anyone but except the most egregious offenders.