Waterloo Region Connected

Full Version: Winter Walking and Cycling
You're currently viewing a stripped down version of our content. View the full version with proper formatting.
(01-15-2018, 02:20 PM)nms Wrote: [ -> ]The service could be called "Plowed Sourcing".

So. Much. Win.

How expensive are shovels... This one at CanTire is ten bucks. Chain's about a buck a foot. Let's skip the chains and just buy twice as many shovels?

Or, for the price of four shovels per household per year, we could raise the tax revenue enough for the Cities to do it. *rage*

Speaking of crowd sourcing, though... I live in one of those places in the tri-cities that has a homeowners' association. I wonder how much we'd have to add to our membership fees to hire a service to clear the sidewalks... If it's a good enough idea for the city, maybe it's a good idea at the neighbourhood level as well.

Can anyone recommend a service? And a base service level? Someone on here _has_ to have worked this out or seen a successful contract before.
(01-15-2018, 03:53 PM)chutten Wrote: [ -> ]
(01-15-2018, 02:20 PM)nms Wrote: [ -> ]The service could be called "Plowed Sourcing".

So. Much. Win.

How expensive are shovels... This one at CanTire is ten bucks. Chain's about a buck a foot. Let's skip the chains and just buy twice as many shovels?

Or, for the price of four shovels per household per year, we could raise the tax revenue enough for the Cities to do it. *rage*

Speaking of crowd sourcing, though... I live in one of those places in the tri-cities that has a homeowners' association. I wonder how much we'd have to add to our membership fees to hire a service to clear the sidewalks... If it's a good enough idea for the city, maybe it's a good idea at the neighbourhood level as well.

Can anyone recommend a service? And a base service level? Someone on here _has_ to have worked this out or seen a successful contract before.

I'm surprised that we have "home owners associations" that don't clear snow.  

Or is a HOA somehow different from a condominium corporation.
(01-15-2018, 04:04 PM)danbrotherston Wrote: [ -> ]
(01-15-2018, 03:53 PM)chutten Wrote: [ -> ]So. Much. Win.

How expensive are shovels... This one at CanTire is ten bucks. Chain's about a buck a foot. Let's skip the chains and just buy twice as many shovels?

Or, for the price of four shovels per household per year, we could raise the tax revenue enough for the Cities to do it. *rage*

Speaking of crowd sourcing, though... I live in one of those places in the tri-cities that has a homeowners' association. I wonder how much we'd have to add to our membership fees to hire a service to clear the sidewalks... If it's a good enough idea for the city, maybe it's a good idea at the neighbourhood level as well.

Can anyone recommend a service? And a base service level? Someone on here _has_ to have worked this out or seen a successful contract before.

I'm surprised that we have "home owners associations" that don't clear snow.  

Or is a HOA somehow different from a condominium corporation.

My understanding is that if one were setting up an HOA here now, one would instead use a common elements condominium — essentially, a condominium with no units, only common elements — or possibly a different type of condominium. But that concept didn’t exist when our HOAs were set up (like the Beechwood organizations that own and operate the pools) so it was done as a rider on the titles of the house lots in question.

What appears to be a good explanation of the types of condominiums in Ontario is here:

http://www.lerners.ca/lernx/types-of-condominiums/

Apologies if I’ve garbled any of the details but I’m reasonably sure this is substantially correct.
(01-15-2018, 05:13 PM)ijmorlan Wrote: [ -> ]
(01-15-2018, 04:04 PM)danbrotherston Wrote: [ -> ]I'm surprised that we have "home owners associations" that don't clear snow.  

Or is a HOA somehow different from a condominium corporation.

My understanding is that if one were setting up an HOA here now, one would instead use a common elements condominium — essentially, a condominium with no units, only common elements — or possibly a different type of condominium. But that concept didn’t exist when our HOAs were set up (like the Beechwood organizations that own and operate the pools) so it was done as a rider on the titles of the house lots in question.

What appears to be a good explanation of the types of condominiums in Ontario is here:

http://www.lerners.ca/lernx/types-of-condominiums/

Apologies if I’ve garbled any of the details but I’m reasonably sure this is substantially correct.

Wow, thanks for the details.  As usual, reality is far more complex than one would guess.
That jives with my understanding, yes. The HOA has a charter which permits it to collect fees against the domiciles within its remit to do... pretty much whatever they want. Pretty sure they could just shovel it into the Sports Coordinator's pockets under a majority vote.

But ours mostly keeps the greenspaces, staffs the pool with lifeguards, and replaces the lights on the tennis court. It also negotiated the construction of a trail bridge with the City... and (before my time) successfully lobbied against the routing of a local-service bus route through the neighbourhood. :(

I figure expanding the fees to cover snow removal would make sense. Efficiencies of scale from a single payer, universal quality of service (paths would be cleared equally well throughout the neighbourhood, at more or less the same time), ... the only thing is, I have no idea how expensive this would be, or even where to get started in looking it up.

If I'm to have a proposal to submit at the AGM, I should probably do the legwork.
(01-15-2018, 05:41 PM)chutten Wrote: [ -> ]That jives with my understanding, yes. The HOA has a charter which permits it to collect fees against the domiciles within its remit to do... pretty much whatever they want. Pretty sure they could just shovel it into the Sports Coordinator's pockets under a majority vote.

But ours mostly keeps the greenspaces, staffs the pool with lifeguards, and replaces the lights on the tennis court. It also negotiated the construction of a trail bridge with the City... and (before my time) successfully lobbied against the routing of a local-service bus route through the neighbourhood. Sad

I figure expanding the fees to cover snow removal would make sense. Efficiencies of scale from a single payer, universal quality of service (paths would be cleared equally well throughout the neighbourhood, at more or less the same time), ... the only thing is, I have no idea how expensive this would be, or even where to get started in looking it up.

If I'm to have a proposal to submit at the AGM, I should probably do the legwork.

That’s actually a really cool idea, and I hope you continue to investigate it. It might act as a “pilot project” for City-managed sidewalk clearing.
Does anyone know if sidewalk clearing came up at the Kitchener council meeting tonight as part of the budget meeting?
IHT, Kitchener and Waterloo sections, was clear by 8:15 this morning!
(01-16-2018, 09:30 AM)Pheidippides Wrote: [ -> ]IHT, Kitchener and Waterloo sections, was clear by 8:15 this morning!

Indeed, in fact, most sections of the trails in the city were cleared, on Caroline, and Laurel Trail up to Lexington except between McKay and Carter by 9:00.

This is why articles like this: https://www.kitchenerpost.ca/opinion-sto...-clearing/

But me so much.

We don't need creative solutions.  We have solutions, which do work.  We don't even have to go so far to see how well they work and how much they'll cost.  We already use them *IN* this city.  Arguing for creative solutions is nothing more than a delaying tactic to try and put the issue off.
That guy has written about the issue in the past. I find it ridiculous that he says that the data in the TriTag report are “largely anecdotal” (they’re not), when he has written to the effect that, since neighbours on his street seem to clear their sidewalks, there is no issue with the status quo.

Note that he doesn’t propose any solutions, creative or otherwise. Regarding City clearing of sidewalks, ee asks “Our work week started with a heavy snow fall and our office was filled with stories of extra-long commuting times and a dearth of plows on the roads. Should we expect sidewalks to be cleared more efficiently if the city is put in charge?”

It’s true that driving took longer on Monday morning. Some roads were not cleared by mid-day. I’m sure plenty of people’s driving commutes were slow. But those roads were cleared by Tuesday. It would be absolutely wonderful to have sidewalks cleared as efficiently as that. Instead, plenty were never cleared at all, and if it weren’t for the thaw last Thursday/Friday, probably still wouldn’t be.

I’ve written letters to the Post in reply to this guy’s thinking (I’m using the word liberally here) on the issue; I don’t think I’ll bother again, though.
(01-16-2018, 11:23 AM)MidTowner Wrote: [ -> ]That guy has written about the issue in the past. I find it ridiculous that he says that the data in the TriTag report are “largely anecdotal” (they’re not), when he has written to the effect that, since neighbours on his street seem to clear their sidewalks, there is no issue with the status quo.

That "anecdotal" really bothered me too. As though he's dismissing the study because the people doing the research aren't part of a large institution. Now sample size might not be considered large but it should have been enough to be statistically relevant.
He's had similar disturbing views on cycling.
I read the study and had the same conclusion that he did. Too small of a sample size and streets chosen arbitrarily. To do this study properly you have to choose streets city wide and with a much larger sample size. I’m not saying that there is not a problem but I would like to see if there is a larger concentration in one area over another part of the city. I could easily choose the same number of streets in my neighbourhood where you would probably see 95%+ of home owners are clearing their sidewalks promptly. Our neighbourhood sidewalks are cleared promptly by its residents and usually well before the streets are cleared. If we left side walk clearing up to the city we would most likely have a similar clearing schedule as to our streets. People would either wait for the city to clear the sidewalks making them all impassible or would more likely do the clearing themselves.
(01-16-2018, 03:26 PM)creative Wrote: [ -> ]I read the study and had the same conclusion that he did. Too small of a sample size and streets chosen arbitrarily. To do this study properly you have to choose streets city wide and with a much larger sample size. I’m not saying that there is not a problem but I would like to see if there is a larger concentration in one area over another part of the city. I could easily choose the same number of streets in my neighbourhood where you would probably see 95%+ of home owners are clearing their sidewalks promptly. Our neighbourhood sidewalks are cleared promptly by its residents and usually well before the streets are cleared. If we left side walk clearing up to the city we would most likely have a similar clearing schedule as to our streets. People would either wait for the city to clear the sidewalks making them all impassible or would more likely do the clearing themselves.

While 95% is far better than the study found, it would still only allow traveling an average of 400 meters before reaching an uncleared sidewalk.

And if you include curb cuts which are cleared much more poorly than sidewalks, it's probably worse.

I realize this is a number you pulled out of nowhere, but it is enlightening to see how only a small number of property owners failing in their duty to clear sidewalks results in very frequent obstructions.

The thing which bothers me is the idea that sidewalks which are 95% cleared are passable.  To many people, they aren't.

Also, if we left sidewalk clearing up to city schedules, your residential street which probably sees little traffic would be cleared eventually, but the main routes to UW and Laurier: Columbia, University, and King which see thousands (maybe tens of thousands) of people use them daily would be cleared the morning before classes, instead of only 95% clear after 2-3 days.
(01-16-2018, 04:11 PM)danbrotherston Wrote: [ -> ]The thing which bothers me is the idea that sidewalks which are 95% cleared are passable.  To many people, they aren't.

when I read it all i could think of was your complaint that the sidewalks were unpassable when there was just some light snowfall last year.