Walker/Central Sidewalk Shame
I don’t know whether this spotlight we’re shining on unshovelled sidewalks gets the credit, but we are seeing some effort on behalf of the caretakers highlighted before in cleaning their sidewalks. Dr. Ghilzon and WFCU on Dougall Avenue have cleared their walks and Majority Control informs me that the sidewalks on Ottawa Street that s/he photographed are cleared enough for him/her to tow their shopping cart unimpeded to the market.
Great news, indeed!
Yet others haven’t received the message. SD reader Hez wrote in with the following observations;
Have to admit this has made me more aware of the state of the sidewalks wherever I go. I work along Huron Line and the sidewalks along that roadway are horrendous. I spoke with our maintenance crew about the walk along the roadway and according to them its the city’s responsibility. But since the city doesn’t necessarily follow up, our maintenance crew tries to maintain the walks along the front of our buildings, but at their own risk as the walk is right up against the road with no buffer (the trucks whizing by and the debris that comes flying off their load).
So, here’s some of Hez’s photos (32 to be exact!), taken out in the Costco Badlands (Walker Road) and along Central Ave. Hez - are you sure there’s supposed to be sidewalks under that snow? 
There’s a ton of photos folks, but all of them show who’s doing their job and who isn’t so I wanted to include them all. Let’s see if we can convince the abutting property owners to do the right thing and clear their walks!
Tags: big box retail, mobility, pedestrian, safety, sidewalk shame
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I’ve had enough of this winter and all of the snow. The lack of common courtesy to shovel your sidewalk doesn’t surprise me but enough is enough. The city needs to step up and finally do something about this, at least START fining businesses and have it broadcast on the 6pm News so other owners take notice. All over the city sidewalks aren’t shoveled, as an able bodied person it still drives me nuts even though I could walk through the snow. Hopefully nothing terrible happens one of these days, such as a pedestrian being forced onto Walker Rd. or Dougall Ave around a giant snowbank and get hit by a motorist.
Hopefully it doesnt take a death to get this city to wake up to this glaring problem… We are a cold weather city, we have snow that accumulates onto sidewalks… that snow needs to be shovelled, even if you “think” no one is walking down your street and that everyone has a car.
Maybe its time someone starts up a very lucrative snow removal company…
Who’s to say it hasn’t? How many people have been hit by buses and cars this winter already? Seems like a pretty high number to me.
I agree with Anonymous. Who says that pedestrian struck on Tecumseh wasn’t in the street because of an unpassable sidewalk? There has been a lot of incidents that are probably attributed to pedestrians being where they shouldn’t be because of someone else’s lack of shovelling.
In the end it is the city’s responsibility. It is their property. They make sure that cars have safe infrastructure, but not pedestrians? Sounds like discrimination to me.
Mabe a few lawsuits would bring the city up to speed as far as their responsibilities go.
actually, anonymous was me. sorry for that. didn’t realize my settings had changed
I witnessed that this morning on Ottawa st. A woman pushing a baby stroller couldn’t pass on the sidewalk in front of that tax place (which was clean) to the sidewalk in front of the convenience store because there was this berm of snow on the sidewalk with a narrow path kicked through the middle, so she used the street and crossed over. Another snow berm on the corner forces anyone trying to walk north on Windermere from Ottawa to detour onto the roadway then back onto the sidewalk at the first driveway (or cross the street and use the other side of the road). A case of snow removal people clearing the parking lot and giving no thought to where they are dumping the snow.
P.S. Just to be clear, she wasn’t hit but she and her baby were endangered by having to detour onto the roadway.
The city can do two things: (1) Have public works shovel the walkways THEN send the bill to the property owner, which I believe has been done in Leamington and other communities; and (2) Start re-assigning enforcement officers to fining offenders. The expired parking meters can take a backseat during periods of heavy snowfall. Is anyone (who cares) from city council reading this post and willing to take the first step on this???
Doesn’t Transit Windsor have a stake in all this as well? I’ve seen people waiting for the bus standing on 4 ft snow piles in the walker rd. badlands. TW should lean on somebody to get the bus stops cleared at a minimum..
I noticed that as well. I’ve also noticed stops where the snow actually has been cleared at or in front of the bus stops, but none of the walks leading to them. I’m wondering how travelers are expected to *get* to these stops?
btw I did notice this morning that the walks were freshly cleared along Central Ave. in front of the lot/plaza containing Brisebois Christian Book Store and also in front of Central Stamping.
http://chrisschnurr.wordpress.com/2009/01/26/city-sidewalks-and-election-reform/
I checked out a newspaper clipping by Urbanrat and looked up the court case.
The one Urbanrat cited, could have significant ramifications for municipalities in terms of Duty of Care. The case is about a laneway, which the city argued they maintained as a highway, except - they did not warn pedestrians nor ban them.
The judge ultimately decided the laneway was to be treated as a sidewalk.
Of course, the City of Toronto is appealing the decision.
I think the problem a lot of times is not home/business owners who have a problem shoveling the snow that falls from the sky. The problem is when the city piles 2 or 3 lanes of wet and heavy snow and slush back onto the sidewalks…That becomes impossible to remove with a shovel. The city needs to put tax dollars to good work and remove that snow they put there.
How does that fit into a scenario where plummeting home prices are reducing the land taxbase, where population emmigration is affecting proportional transfers from the province and where essential services are being threatened by municipal deficits?
This isn’t a matter of throwing more money at scenario, it is figuring out 1) why it happens and 2) determining how the community, at large, can resolve it. The city is going to claim operational efficiency for its’ current methods. Business owners are going to claim financial burden. In the end, consumers and residents are the ones who end up holding the short end of the stick.
IMO, tax dollars do good work when they generate solid returns on sound investments. Plowing the sidewalks in front of every business in the city is not a sound investment.
It just proves further that we cannot afford all the infrastructure we have and we desperately need to look at abandoning portions of our municipality and refocusing on others in an effort to A/ adjust the inventory of our homes and commercial buildings so that value would be added to the ones we choose to save, and B/ reduce the quantity of infrastructure we need to maintain so that we can utilize the remainder for it’s intended purpose.
This would enrich the quality of life for the residents of the municipality after readjustment, as well as provide increased value due to the readjusted inventory of real estate.
We cannot afford to continue throwing good money after bad.
(now I’m just waiting to hear what Vincent has to say about this scenario ;))
I just had a sad conversation with a neighbour of mine.
She admittedly hates everything to do with the winter. She hates the snow. The troublesome aspect of this is the only reason she hates the snow is the fact it’s hard to drive around in.
She just told me out on the porch that she now has one more reason to hate the winter - a good friend of hers was involved in a serious auto incident while driving into the city from the county. She lost control of her vehicle and was involved in a head-on collision that left her in a vegetative state.
While I sympathize for the incident and the rough life that her family will have to go through from now on, it saddens me that my neighbour is choosing to hate an entire season rather than lay the blame where it belongs - on her friends transportation mode of choice and the governmental body responsible for it.
How are we going to move forward towards progressive, fundamental change when most of our society cannot even recognise the problems with the system that we have built up around ourselves? We choose to blame the weather, God or the government instead of looking inward at our own behavior.
…and we are hoping that people will shovel sidewalks when most of them don’t even use them. We are facing an uphill battle, folks.
Chris, have you ever listen to Detroit traffic reports after a snowfall? My alarm is set to the Detroit NPR station and after even the smallest snowfall the list of traffic accidents is huge. Is it any wonder when you consider the sprawl of Detroit.
glad central ave finally got cleared…along the west side anyway. Every morning I see pedestrians and one person in a wheelchair walking their dog and I asked my husband, “How does that person in the wheelchair get around when the sidewalks aren’t clear?”
Six new sidewalk plows!
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/Business/Gatineau+welcome+sidewalk+plows/1237511/story.html
City spokeswoman Manuelle Ann Boissonneault said the plows should improve Gatineau’s snow removal time. At present, the city aims to have sidewalks cleared within 24 hours of a major snowfall. Roads are to be completed within 16″
Windsor can’t even enforce its own by-laws!