Winter Walking and Cycling

[danbrotherston]

I am laughing and crying. Because I asked basically the same question 13 years or so ago. Spent 10 years of that learning, evolving, advocating, then I moved out of the city, at least in part because the sidewalks were intolerably blocked every winter and I did not foresee that ever changing. So no, I don’t think anything will ever change. But if you call your ward councillor there’s a small chance they’ll eventually clear some habitually uncleared sidewalks, once, after 2-4 weeks of constant calling. Might be worth it if you go every day. But call your ward councillor, not staff would be my advice. Ask to be CCed on the internal email.

A few years ago, I exchanged a number of e-mails with my then-councillor, and had a conversation with a bylaw supervisor. The latter said to me that bylaw officers were out and about, but that if their opinion it could be walked on, it was okay, whether it was clear or hard-packed or otherwise.

Neither I nor my councillor (and I do think she was trying) could get an answer as to what kind of direction (if any) the bylaw officers were given in determining whether something was passable beyond that it be passable. These tend to be able-bodies adults, and there was no sense of whether they were directed to try to determine if it was passable for someone in a wheelchair, or a child, or someone unsteady on his feet.

It was an ordeal. It's arguably worse now, because I don't even know for sure if anyone is out at all, and I'm starting to suspect not. I guess I'll e-mail my current councillor and see what I can find out.

Personally, I think it would be better if they just said "Sidewalks not maintained during winter. Use at own risk." and abandoned this polite fiction. It's a bit discouraging to walk down sidewalks that have never been cleared, and then see a City of Kitchener truck abundantly spraying salt all over a parking lot. But if we all agree that's "just the way it is," at least there would be clarity.

I agree, that it would be better if they stopped lying.

The problem is that they cannot legally do so. The sidewalks are required to be cleared by our equivalent of the ADA requirements. So they have to pretend that they actually are.

What pisses me off is that you can actually have a conversation with members of council, but I have found no combination of words, pictures, or even experiences that will convince them that our current system is broken. For some, this is probably because they do not care, others are simply unwilling to acknowledge the problems because it would mean they have to do something different (and of course, spending money on doing good work is anti-thetical to their beliefs).

Again, part of why I gave up and left. Admittedly, if you just want to fix the sidewalk problem, you don't have to go nearly as far as you think. London, St. Marys, even Elmira have municipal sidewalk clearing that is infinitely (yes, infinitely, the denominator is 0 after all) better than Kitchener's.