Whether or not you enjoy well-plowed winter sidewalks depends on where you live, when you use them, and your neighbours.
Sidewalks get a lot of use in the urban bits of the City. Especially where the road is a grid pattern, pedestrians can get from point A to B directly and easily on a route easily understood.
The City plows the sidewalks in winter. If you are an early riser walking to work or the bus stop, the sidewalk plowing is most noticeable when it hasn’t yet been done at 7am. Non-commuters with flexible time are more likely to be satisfied with plowing provided it is done at all.
Neighbours can pitch in, for better or worse. On one side of my street there is a retired resident with a snowblower. He usually makes the first track all the way along the block, as he has done for years.
I am not sure if he is being thoughtful for the rest of people on the street, or just havin’ fun with the big toy. (After a decade of this service, I guess it’s time to bake him some cookies to say thank you …). Whatever, it works out well. Much better than a previous resident further up the street who always used his blower for a super-clean driveway but he blew the snow onto the sidewalk with abandon. Gee, thanks!
Kids can be useful too. Some people only remember the kids who climb on snow piles and knock the snow back down onto the driveway or sidewalk. I prefer to challenge kids (usually about 8-10 years old is just right…) to see if they can shovel a path all the way up to the corner of the street (tip of the hat to Mark Twain). For a number of years, the City had my block on the latter part of the City’s sidewalk plowing schedule, but there was always a narrow path dug out about 4pm when the kids got home from school. By time they were old enough to ask for money, they were no longer interested in shoveling.
I live in the last house on a dead-end street, at the lowest point on the street. Guess where the catch basins are? Yup, out under the Mount Trashmore that gets stacked up on the street. I’m always out digging a path along the curb make sure the water runs down the sewer and not into my basement. I don’t tend to do as nice a job as this person did last weekend on Preston Street:
Walking the sidewalks after a snowfall may be a drudge or a an adventure. A young lady up the street was brushing snow off her car while her yappy dog burst with excitement trying to jump up to catch the flying snow:
I used to call the phone number on the laneway post where private contractors plowed the snow from someone’s driveway onto the sidewalk. They never sounded interested or concerned, so I switched to snitching on them to 3-1-1. They keep track of offenders, issuing a warning ticket once then severe penalties for subsequent offenses. The dumping of snow onto sidewalks is pretty much eliminated where I walk.
But there are exceptions. Here is our good neighbour Claridge. They have a sales office and contractor’s parking lot at 89-91 Nepean, where they are in the process of getting approved yet another small-lot 28 storey condo. They plowed all the lot onto the sidewalk, but tidied up carefully on the car parking lane. When I got to my destination a call to 3-1-1 and on my return trip the snow was gone.
Do your neighbours do anything special for winter sidewalks? Do YOU do anything for your neighbours?
Eric Darwin writes the popular blog West Side Action, and is active in community planning initiatives. He is president of the Dalhousie Community Association and has a background in geography, transportation, and was an entrepreneur.
inline photos by the author; top photo by Eric Schmuttenmaer
7 comments
The City’s sidewalk plowing does seem to get worse by the year and it’s not helped by the “new normal” winter weather with the freezing rain we seem to get every other week.
Having said that good neighbours can make a huge difference and are well worth rewarded with cookies, muffins or even the odd spot of liquid encouragement; for many years we had a fantastic neighbour with a snowblower, and we made sure to bring him a bottle of something special at Christmas to let him know how much it was appreciated.
Sorry that should be “well worth rewarding”, not “rewarded”.
Disturbing how many institutional/commercial properties act in a similar way to Claridge. They contract with some removal crew that gives a low bid for the whole winter, and seem to think they can then wash their hands of the whole matter, neighbourly etiquette and all.
What drives me crazy are the crews that clear the parking lots on our street — they never start before midnight, no matter the volume of snowfall, and of course are constantly revving their engines on each approach, and then they let their front blades drop with a huge clang, maybe forty or fifty times to clear the whole lot. I’m wide awake after the first blade drop, and getting back to sleep is impossible until the whole lot is cleared. It’s yet another cost to quality of life that is never accounted for when excess surface parking is permitted.
Jim – yeah, it’s a mixed bag that snow clearing vehicles are exempt from the noise and idling by-laws. Except when they’re on break!
I usually shovel the sidewalk in front of my place, and a gap in the windrow.
I also keep a shovel with me and clear out the bike racks wherever I go, so that the next person can also use it. Once I went back to a place I had cleared and saw that the place had started clearing the snow from there on their own! I guess they saw it was shoveled and must have thought they did it.
When we had that thaw in mid-February, I went around with my sidewalk scraper to clear around the drains in my neck of the woods. Chopping ice blocks with full force is remarkably cathartic.
Still, as Eric writes, there is always room for improvement. I wrote up a post on my blog yesterday, which will go up on Wednesday (scooped again!), on some more specific examples.
I, too, spend a bit of personal time ‘helping’ the City get it right on the sidewalk in front of our Sandy Hill house, as well as next door, where the house faces the sidestreet and the owner is over 80.
I don’t use a snowblower, but my arms, shovelling snow and, as Eric recounts, cutting a channel next to the curb for drainage to the catch basin. The latter requires a hatchet to get through the ice. The older sidewalk design fills with water, and requires a lot of help to drain properly. Thankfully, the city paints markers in the centre of the roadway to show the exact location of the catch basins.
The City needs help, since they have a program that leaves a lot to be desired. First, they don’t plough until they deal with the roads first, often waiting for more than a day if the snowfall occurred on a weekend, as if people don’t walk then.
Second, the operators don’t follow the contours of the sidewalks at corners, where they are rounded, but rather leave it unploughed, forcing pedestrians to stand in harm’s way waiting for vehicles that sometime turn, in a path that we have to step back to avoid betting nailed.
Third, the operators only have one tool: a plough with a 4-foot blade (making a 3.5-foot clearway, thanks to the blade needing to be turned a bit), and that means that places where there is a permanent encroachment (like a Hydro pole) block their way, and they deak out into the street, leaving the pedestrians to wade through snow or also go into the street (these situations seem to all be on busy arterials). They should have shovels to clear the problem sections by hand.
Fourth, they don’t have a way to cope with thaws or ice storms that coat everything in ice. Timing is everything, to get the snow/slush out of the right-of-way before temperatures drop too much, as was the case yesterday.
The City seems to aim for _clear_ roads, but only _ploughed_ sidewalks. Our vaunted transit service is very dependent on the walking being better to get people to shift to — and be loyal to — transit.
As to the removal of snow from private land onto the public right-of-way (even to the verges, if not the roads and sidewalks), that is a problem that our former Winter Walking Committee, under former councillor Elizabeth Arnold, tackled. the City chose a solution that involved a larger bureaucracy: require all contractors to have licenses issued by the city, which they could lose if they are reported to have moved snow out onto the roadway. But there are still many violations. I encourage pedestrians and neighbours to report these infractions to the city.
One of the tools of the trade for contractors are these Bobcat mini-front loaders. They don’t seem to have proper plates or commercial logos/IDs, so you can’t do a proper ID on them. Maybe taking photos will help.
Yesterday, I took a photo of a man shoveling snow at Friel and Rideau, to get the right surface to get his wife in an unpowered wheelchair through. The plough had gone past just a few minutes earlier, but had not taken the time to get the corner cleared right. So sad! But a sign of the times when he has to carry a shovel with him on winter outings.
No such folk on my street. The opposite, in fact. So many use contractors who take their Bobcats and dump all the snow from the properties on the street. Nice clean driveways for the homeowners but no where to park for those who park on the street or for visitors. It is everyone for themselves.
Out here in the inner suburbs neighbours don’t lift a finger to work on the sidewalks – we don’t have many! In car-centric Bells Corners pedestrians are scarce.
City crews clear our roads and sidewalks immediately after a storm – here in the former City of Nepean we like our core services, especially the ones that serve the automobile.
But there’s still a community element to digging out after a storm – it’s just focussed on driveways rather than on sidewalks.
People often chip in to help each other out. It’s not unusual to see a guy with a snowblower going around helping neighbours after a particularly nasty storm.
When I was away in Montreal to play hockey a neighbour I hardly even know snowblew my place just to be nice (which I appreciated, since an unplowed driveway in Bells Corners is a sure sign to thieves that no one is home).
Even people with a driveway contractor, like seniors who get half the cost subsidized by the taxpayer, can use help after the monster plow has passed and filled in the driveways with heavy snow.
http://bellscorners.wordpress.com/2011/03/08/snow-what/