Narrow inner-city streets can be tortuous in winter
The inner city is where it’s at, if you want to live close to the action and don’t mind sharing a confined space with a lot of neighbours.
But during a cold, snowy winter, narrow streets that are a defining feature of the inner city can make even the most basic tasks a frustrating challenge.
A Seymour Ave. resident described how snow and freeze-and-thaw weather had transformed large snowbanks on his street into “hardened, icy piles of frozen car killers,” and that the road surface was “uneven ice treachery.”
A reader in the Mount Dennis area, near Eglinton Ave. and Weston Rd., told us that parking on the hilly streets in his neighbourhood is an ordeal, due to large, rock-hard snowbanks between ice-covered parking spaces. Some cars parked on an incline can’t be moved until the ice melts, he said.
With nowhere to park but the street in older parts of the city, it simply isn’t possible for plows to clear all the snow between the curbs or parked cars. And without a sustained thaw, it just gets icier and harder.
Even inner-city dwellers that can access private parking via back alleys are up against it; many alleys haven’t been plowed and have an ice-coated ridge in the middle that scrapes the underside of cars and can tear off a muffler.
Suburbanites are less aware of those challenges, which we were reminded of Friday, when we went looking for tiny Archer Ave., which had been plowed just once this winter, and got stuck in a maddening maze for almost an hour.
We mapped out a route taking us south on Dufferin St., west on Croatia St. to Brock Ave., then south on Brock to Cobourg Ave., which connects with Archer.
As we turned left onto Brock we spotted a street-closed sign. A truck that vacuums storm drains blocked the street further south, so we turned around, went back along Croatia to Dufferin, then south to Lindsey Ave., a narrow, one-way street that goes west and connects with Brock.
About halfway over to Brock, vehicles in front of us were at a dead stop. Two guys manning a garbage truck were picking up bins. There were so many bins on the narrow street that they never travelled more than a few metres before jumping out and using mechanical arms to empty them.
It took 20 minutes to follow the garbage truck no more than 100 metres to Brock.
We hoped it would turn south on Brock, since we wanted to go north. By the time we got to the corner, we could no longer see it, which pleased us immensely.
But the same vacuum truck had Brock closed off further north, leaving us to find another way to Archer. Our only choice was to go back east on Muir Ave., another narrow, one-way street.
We made the right onto Muir, hoping to scoot over to Sheridan Ave. and go north. And there was the garbage truck, just around the corner, inching its way east. We let out a scream.
With cars already behind us, a snowbank on one side and parked vehicles on the other, there was no escape. We were again stuck for 25 frustrating minutes.
It felt like a scene from the 1871 book Alice Through the Looking Glass. This way out, no way out.
Our trek made us feel sorry for people who live and drive on narrow, inner-city streets. In winter, they pay for the convenience, bigly.