General Urban Kitchener Updates and Rumours

[westwardloo]

Well, you're wrong, I've lived in London, I've lived here. Our sidewalks are not clear. Yeah, it take 48 hours, which is better than the 4 months it takes here. I'm not exaggerating, there has never been a time when I've walked up a clear sidewalk in KW.  Yeah, your neighbourhood might be clear, I don't care, major sidewalks are not, constantly.

This is the biggest problem with our policy, neighbourhoods look fine because their filled with guiltable homeowners, and able bodied folks who don't really not notice one uncleared walk on their way to the neighbourhood park or mailbox. But out here in the real world, it's impossible to actually get anywhere in the city on foot for four months of the year.

But if you don't want to take my word for it, then take the data that the city collected, the area they cleared sidewalks in had far clearer sidewalks than the area the city proactively enforced against residents doing it.

That's empirical data....it conclusively validated my experience, I'm sick and tired of bullshit denialism of my constant awful experience....so while I was never polite about it before, expect me to be even less polite now.

As for UW's parking, no they don't make money on it, sure they charge for it, but building and maintaining parking is expensive, they don't charge anywhere near the cost of maintining their parking anywhere on campus, least of all downtown where property values are higher. And no, their parking lot isn't the biggest in DTK, but it does still cover an entire city block. I really doubt they plan to do anything with it, besides pave it...it's a bad land use for downtown, and I am not going to support it.

Well 4 months is a bit of an exaggeration. Obviously side walks are clearer when the city provides that surface, but is it worth the cost to do so? in my opinion, the cities staff and councils opinion, it is not. Certain areas of the city where winter walking is more prevalent like downtown receives this service, it works well and cost to the city are minimal (890K per year in 2016). That is for 193km of sidewalk. there are over 1,200km of sidewalk in the city, which would cost the city 3.6million per year + 4.0million the capital expense of purchasing equipment. There would also be costs associated with complaints/ damages.  Kitchener's winter sidewalk report concluded that residential complaints went up when the city took over the service.  Personally that money is better spent expanding permanent separated bike lanes.  

There is no need to be aggressive with your opinion on how this city should spend its budget, it is your opinion, you can certainly advocate for what you feel is important and I respect that. But I have a different opinion and we can have a civil discourse about these issues.

I don't work for UW so I don't know what revenue that make, but based on a quick research. They have 6,000 parking spaces. it costs about $300 per year to maintain surface parking (new York, 2013 http://buildabetterburb.org/financing-pa...per%20year) UW charges various rates depending on parking lot, but lets say $5 per parking. That means they needs a car parked in that spot at least 60 times per year in order to make a profit. I am going to go out on a limb and saw, yes they do make money on their surface parking lots. 

Just because they don't have submitted plans right now does not mean they don't have a future vision for it. It would be very short sighted of the university to sell the property today, then in a decade realize they want to expand and have to buy a property not adjacent to the existing health science campus.