Winter Walking and Cycling

[danbrotherston]

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.

I grew up in London. The service is definitely not perfect, Londoners could (and do) complain the city doesn't come quickly enough. But eventually, the sidewalks will be cleared and, once they are, you know they all are.

Yeah, I'm also from London, I have tried to explain this to city councilors, and most of them were willing to play stupid and continue to pretend that Kitchener is better because a few homeowners clear sidewalks better than the city. And I say "playing stupid" because I don't for one second believe that people elected to council aren't smart enough to understand this.

I spoke with Kitchener bylaw this morning, and their main challenge to hear them explain it is they have to wait 24 hours after each snowfall to investigate a complaint. The clock resets multiple times if we have more snow, and then even really egregious cases take weeks to have anything done about them.

Yeah, I've pointed this out before, they do not care. They pretend it's not a big deal and pretend that the 24 hour clock makes perfect sense.

The person I spoke with talked to me about a case of a vacant property whose sidewalk has never been cleared this winter. It was apparently reported by someone on January 10, bylaw tried unsuccessfully to call the owner, and it is now due to be cleared. That will likely not happen until the end of this week, so in this case it takes

And this is exactly the result. They will clear the sidewalk once in the winter after weeks of complaints. They do this not because it is at all meaningful in keeping sidewalks clear, but because it gives them plausible deniability that they believe (although I don't think this has been literally tested in court) protects them from lawsuits about violation of accessibility law.

Literally the point of doing this is to shut you and I up.

But on the plus side, sometimes occasionally a sidewalk might get cleared as a side effect.

I literally have nothing polite to say about this. I advocated a lot for biking, but even I feel that was a fringe position. This issue is the one that radicalized me.