Winter Walking and Cycling

[dtkmelissa]

Municipal Snow Cearing is a Bad Idea

https://www.therecord.com/opinion-story/...-bad-idea/

Just getting around to reading this now but have so many thoughts!

1 - When did the argument become either the city clears all of the sidewalks with sidewalk plows or we leave it 100% up to citizens? The appeal of the pilot project for me was the chance to try out a few options and see what works best in our community.

2 - I find it incredibly frustrating to say 'the value is just not there'. There are some things in society that are more important than financial value. I would argue (quite forcefully!) that an accessible city is one of those things. We are getting much better as a society in seeing the importance of things like curb cuts and barrier-free infrastructure (though we still need to improve) and to me, this fits in the same place. Might it be more expensive? Perhaps (though I'm really not convinced) but that does not mean it's still not the right and important thing to do.

3 - Of course complaints increase when the city takes over because there is a very different expectation from citizens. It does not mean that the city is doing a worse job than the status quo. I can not emphasize this enough! People seem to think that because complaints increase with city run clearing it's because the sidewalks are not as clean. I don't believe that to be the case.

4 - 22 kms of segregated bike lanes every year? OK, let's make a deal then. I'll stop advocating for clear sidewalks and you build and maintain (and clear) 22 kms of bike lanes every year from now on...then pedestrians can just use those spaces when the sidewalks are impassable