Winter Walking and Cycling

[danbrotherston]

What I have an issue with: I risk getting charged if I don’t scrape my sidewalk down to the bare dry concrete... but the Region leaves more than half of the MUT’s completely unmaintained.

This is why I’ll never call anyone in for not shoveling: I almost feel like everyone should just stop shoveling for a week to force the Region to make sidewalk clearing by them a thing.

Do you?  What is the actual requirement as to "how shovelled" a sidewalk is required to be?  I always figured that a snow-packed surface, of the sort left by a snowblower, would pass muster, at least until it became icy.

CoK at least and others are perhaps similar require "bare pavement"...which is an unnecessary and stupid standard...stupid because it's a) impossible in some situations without the use of exorbitant amounts of salt (although, not if you shovel early and often and don't drive over the snow) and b) unnecessary to the free travel of everyone including disabled people.  

What is necessary is a smooth hard surface with good traction, which means, either bare pavement, or a hard snowpack surface with no ice that's immediately cleaned up upon partial thawing.

Which one is easier to enforce or evaluate.  This is why they choose "bare pavement" as a standard, because it's clear one way or another, there's no judgement.

That being said, I wouldn't worry about have bylaw call you on it, frankly, I doubt they actually enforce the bare pavement requirement and also, it requires someone to call you in, so unless your neighbours have it out for you, it's unlikely to even get called about.

That being said, my sidewalk has been bare pavement all year.