Winter Walking and Cycling

[MidTowner]

Thanks for that clarification; I was under the impression that proactive enforcement was city-wide last winter.

I recognize that Bylaw's report after last winter showed that it did work, but they measured success based on how many sidewalks had to be sent to contractors, didn't they? Staff changed the criteria they used mid-season, from "clear" to "passable," and that's a subjective one.

To my mind, the same basic bylaw regime that has existed, still does, and is not working. I say that as someone who walks around, often pushing a stroller, and still encounters sidewalks that force me on to the street, even many days after a snowfall.

I'm not entirely sure what is preventing the City from issuing orders to clear and following up on them, but my experience (again, as a mere citizen just trying to get around) is that they are generally not doing that, whether proactively or reactively to resident complaints.

I don't think that clarification is correct. Council explicitly passed a motion requiring pro-active bylaw enforcement to be rolled out city wide at a higher cost, and that's exactly what staff did. I believe the_councillor is incorrect about this, but if anyone want's to dig up the report and verify that staff actually followed council's direction that'd be good.

As for what is preventing the city from sending a clear order, nothing, but they don't know about it, enforcement is incomplete to a laughable degree, 99.9999% of the sidewalks in the city are never visited by an enforcement officer, unless someone calls them in, the city will never visit them. This is true under both reactive and pro-active enforcement.

Real proactive enforcement, where officers visit every sidewalk a few times per storm (like those of us who ride the LRT experience with fare enforcement) would be prohibitively expensive.

You're right, the clarification was wrong. Here's the report: INS-19-009

From the report, on the pilot: "bylaw officers proactively inspected sidewalks citywide."

So I stand by my initial assessment that the enforcement as it has been practiced doesn't seem to be achieving much, given that the sidewalks that I routinely encounter uncleared are the same ones as earlier this season, and the same ones in years past. This in spite of the fact that the City has had reports about these properties (from me and from others), and has been conducting proactive inspections.

I personally believe that clear sidewalks could be achieved with a regime requiring property owners to clear them. But it would require actual punitive measures for failure to do so. Property owners obviously feel they have nothing to fear from the City if they just don't bother clearing their sidewalks, and I would say that that's a rational belief on their parts.