Winter Walking and Cycling

[danbrotherston]

So how did the meeting go?

TL;DR The staff report passed, as written, with a small amendment from Sarah Marsh to change the working centre supported sidewalk clearing support program to 100 homes from the previous 50 with the requisite increase in funding.  The report as approved, will move to council in two weeks if others wish to attend then.

Other amendments from Councillor Scott Davey to defer component 2 (the actual snow clearing pilot), and from Councillor Debbie Chapman amending component 2 to be a full pilot instead of all snow clearing instead of only being triggered at 8 cm both failed, with Ms. Chapman's motion ending in a very close 5-5 tie.

I was the only delegation, sadly.  There was extensive discussion.  I was frustrated by the inability, unwillingness, or general lack of focus on actually evaluating metrics of how clear the sidewalk is.  Staff's report does not seem to measure this in any way, besides the single datapoint of pro-active bylaw enforcement finding that 20% of sidewalks are blocked when the lax bylaw standards actually apply--what I would call strong evidence that the current system is an abject failure.

I do not know why this was not evaluated for existing city cleared sidewalks, I do not know why this is not a priority.

Staff are planning to get environics or other agency to do a survey of people's opinions, which I think is pointless, I do not care what people think of our sidewalks. I already know their opinions are not based in fact, or objective evaluation.  What I care about is whether our sidewalks are clear.