Be nice Toronto, clear our ice
As long as it’s policy that homeowners should shovel sidewalks, we should do so. But the city should take over the job
I spent a few minutes today trying to imagine a city policy for snow removal that depended on homeowners clearing the ice from roadways adjacent to their properties. The thought experiment was good for a laugh until I got to the point of picturing all those condo dwellers out wielding snow shovels on the Gardiner Expressway, when the absurdity of it got to be too much.
Of course we would not depend on individual residents to clear snow off the roads.
We consider the safe, quick movement of cars in the city simply too important to leave it to the whims of individual strength and initiative. We all have to get around, right?
And yet, what about sidewalks? In most of the central city, the old preamalgamation city of Toronto, leaving the snow to the whims of householder effort on residential streets is exactly what we do. The city doesn’t clear the sidewalks on side streets in the Annex or Little Italy or Cabbagetown or Leslieville. Instead, it requires homeowners to do so, within 12 hours of a snowfall. It also requires them to put salt or sand on the sidewalk to keep it free from ice.
“Be nice, clear your ice,” we’ve been saying every year since at least the days when Ben Wicks’ cartoon appeared on the front page of this newspaper, to remind people of their responsibility. And to back up the cheerful reminder, the city threatens fines of $125 for those who fail to do so.
We all know how well that works. It doesn’t.
If you’ve endured the slip-and-slide of downtown Toronto in winter, you know pretty well it doesn’t work, and if you’re like me you have the bruises and cuts to prove it.
If you’ve tried to navigate the streets pushing a stroller, or in a mobility scooter or wheelchair, you’ll know it even more keenly. Lots of people clear their ice and snow, but on any given block, you can count on at least a few not to have done so.
But what about those fines? If they aren’t a deterrent, the city must be racking up the revenue, right? Not so much. According to a recent item in the Globe and Mail, the city handed out 47 of those $125 tickets last year.
Which makes about one fine for each time I personally slipped on the ice. That level of enforcement in a city of 2.8 million qualifies as nonenforcement.
As long as I’m casting stones here, let me admit I am not without sin: there are days when I’ve overslept and rushed out to get the kids on the school bus and then off to work leaving my own walk covered in snow.
I’m not proud of it, but I think it’s an entirely understandable thing. People get sick, they go out of town on vacation, they get immersed in binge-watching a series on Netflix and look up more than 12 hours later to see it has snowed.
We should clear our snow, since that is the city policy and so many others depend on it. (Seriously, get out your shovels, people.) But it shouldn’t surprise anyone that after any given snowfall, lots of people don’t. As frustrating as it is, it’s the most predictable and understandable thing in the world.
If the city government cared about having the sidewalks accessibly navigable to pedestrians, it would clear them.
Depending on a volunteer workforce of homeowners doing it on their own initiative (under threat of a nominal and rarely levied fine) is the kind of thing you do when you don’t care if it actually gets done.
Toronto’s government not only plows the roads and sidewalks in the inner suburban areas, but also provides “windrow clearing” — plowing out the ends of people’s driveways so they can get their cars out.
And yet, in the parts of the city where people are most likely to use their own two feet as a main form of transportation — the most compactly built, “walkable” parts of the city — this same government says it is “unable to provide this service” of clearing snow from sidewalks.
Let’s be honest. It is not “unable.” It is “unwilling.”
Dylan Reid of Walk Toronto points out that if you look at the map that shows streets the city will not clear because it says they are “blocked,” you can see that it does clear many streets that are similar in their level of blockage. Riverdale streets north of the Danforth are cleared, those identical in character south of it are not. Carlaw Ave. just south of the Danforth is cleared where it is a narrow residential street with parking on it because it is a main street further south, while other similarly narrow streets immediately surrounding it are not.
Besides, in other cities, such as Montreal and Ottawa, with similar pre-war-era streetscapes, the city clears snow from residential sidewalks.
In 2014, Reid’s group Walk Toronto prepared a report for the city suggesting Toronto should take respon- sibility for clearing all its sidewalks. In order to clear the 1,100 linear kilometres in the central city that it now leaves to imperfect homeowners, the report suggested, it could follow the lead of other cities and buy compact plows that can do the job on narrow streets. Or it could, as one city report contemplated, hire a crew to hand-clear them by shovel. That latter option would be by far the most expensive, costing the city an additional estimated $10 million a year. If it pursued that most-expensive option, the annul tab for snow removal per capita in Toronto would increase about $4 from $32.77. We would still be spending about 30 per cent less per capita per centimetre of snow than they spend in Ottawa and Montreal.
Proper sidewalk plows would make that much cheaper. The city would also likely save money on liability costs. In their 2014 report, Walk Toronto said the city currently pays out between $7 million and $20 million a year in claims from those who’ve slipped on icy city sidewalks. Some claims would still appear even if the city cleared all sidewalks, but it seems reasonable to expect substantial savings.
All that aside, it’s just the right thing to do. It was expensive to cut all the curbs and crosswalk entrances in the city so they’d be accessible, but we did it because the city needs to be navigable. It’s expensive to clear the snow from all roads, but we do it to make the city safe and easier to get around. The same logic should apply to sidewalks.
This winter, be nice, clear your ice. But while you’re out there, let your aching back and frozen ears be your reminder to call on the city government to do it for you and for everyone. Edward Keenan writes on city issues ekeenan@thestar.ca. Follow: @thekeenanwire