You can’t clear snow with arithmetic
I have been working on an arithmetic problem, at about the Grade 5 level. That’s pretty much where I stalled out in school. Arithmetic I could manage, sort of. Algebra, mathematics and trigonometry, not so much.
In high school, I took two years of trigonometry, and I still don’t even know what it is. I squeaked through with 51s, only because the teachers knew I would never pursue a career involving trigonometry. They could pass me without putting anyone in mortal danger.
They were right. Since I graduated from high school I never once have needed trigonometry, at work or at home. In this, I am not alone. Long since dropped from high school curricula, trig is all but extinct. In the last year, for instance, the word “trigonometry” has not appeared even once in the pages of The StarPhoenix. Not once. By comparison, the word “fart” during that same period appears 13 times. Draw your own conclusions.
Fortunately, the problem at hand is strictly arithmetic. I didn’t even need a calculator, although I used one anyway. My times tables are a little rusty, and the parts that aren’t rusty are Bondo.
The numbers here have to do with municipal snow clearing, which always is in flux. You would think a winter city like Saskatoon would have snow clearing all figured out. You would think people from other cities would be coming here to see how we do it. But no. More than 100 years after the city was established in a place where winter brutally prevails for five or six months of the year, we still are trying to get it right.
The latest effort was a proposal from a city councillor to have city crews clear snowy sidewalks, a chore now foisted off on property owners, under threat of fines for non-compliance.
Let’s figure out how to get the streets cleared first, was the response from other city councillors. The administration was no more enthusiastic. Clearing the sidewalks would cost $3.3 million every time it was done, said a report to council’s transportation committee. The amount, everyone in authority agreed, was prohibitive.
To me, the figure seemed high. That’s a lot of money, $ 3.3 million. Of course, Saskatoon has a lot of sidewalks. According to an earlier report on sidewalk repairs, there are 1,452 kilometres of sidewalks in the city. If you put them all in a straight line, they would form a sidewalk all the way to Vancouver, but everyone here would be walking in mud.
What I did was divide the amount it would cost the city to clear all the sidewalks by their total length, or, $3.3 million divided by 1,452 kilometres. It works out to $2,272 per kilometre of sidewalk, or $2.27 per metre. A typical house in our neighbourhood has 20 metres of frontage. For the city to clear snow off the walk would cost 20 times $2.27, which works out to $45 and change. Just for the sidewalk.
Clearing ankle-deep snow with a shovel off 20 metres of sidewalk takes not more than a half-hour, and that’s if you pace yourself. Who gets $45 for a half-hour of unskilled labour? If a kid offered to shovel the sidewalk, and you asked how much, and he said $45, you would expect one of two possible futures for that kid, jail or a job with the city, possibly in the senior administration.
Of course the city would use machinery to clear the walks. Machinery is more efficient than a kid with a shovel, except, apparently, when it comes to moving snow.
I should disclose here my special interest in sidewalk maintenance. Because we live on a corner lot, we have two- and- a- half times as much sidewalk to clear as on a regular lot. When the neighbours finish shovelling and they’re sipping hot chocolate with their loved ones in the comfort of their homes, I’m still out there busting my hump in the cold for another half-hour. Then I come inside and do arithmetic.