Winter Walking and Cycling

[danbrotherston]

FWIW...I feel staff presented the study in a very misleading way, by saying the sidewalks were "7% better" when they moved from ~13% blocked to ~6% blocked (i.e., sidewalks were blocked less than half as often as before, not 7% fewer).

This. I don't know whether the staff were totally clued out about the use of statistics or intentionally misrepresented them. Either way, it made the sidewalk-clearing look far less effective than it really was.

I suspect it was intentional, and I suspect it was as directed by council...I raised it a number of times, both with council and with staff, and nobody asked "Oh, I'm not sure what you mean, oh that's a good point" no...instead of engaging as they did for other questions they always quickly shushed it down, and ignored the question.

So I figure they were told, we're not going to pass this, downplay it please so the story is better when we do the thing that the study says doesn't work.