We don’t do snow well. Mostly we rely on nature to get rid of it. When serious snow falls and sticks around, municipal engineers don’t scale up for military-style operations – except on high-speed highways:
For those they have big, fast trucks with plows that pile up the snow on the shoulders, since nothing else is there.
In cities, however, piling up snow in a ridge along the road is a problem.
Other people use the space where the snow is piled. Like transit riders.
For the elderly, the disabled and to some degree for all of us, this is brutal.
A snowfall that approaches disaster status brings out our character in starker relief. It says a lot about those who don’t clear the sidewalks in front of their property:
Funny thing about the part of the sidewalk that is shovelled here: it’s next to a vacant lot. The part that isn’t belongs to a Robson Street apartment (the Camelot) that only bothered to do half the job. Like the restaurant down the block:
Or the corner where the Vina Restaurant didn’t undertake to clear the curbs where their customers might be walking:
On the other hand, the evidence of civility, a little caring and a fair amount of muscle is piled up for all to see:
I’d be wary of complaining that the City didn’t do a good enough job handling the snow. I can guess the conclusion of any review: buy us the equipment needed for a military-style snow-clearing operation.
Generally speaking, a city designed to accommodate bigger trucks doesn’t work as well for the rest of us.
It’s more a question of priorities: should snow continue to be dumped on sidewalks, or could it be piled in the curb lane as done on the Burrard Bridge? On most streets, however, that would require the removal of parked cars – always emotional and difficult to enforce.
First thing, though: reinforce the idea that civility and caring sometimes need a good shovel and a little muscle.
Response to this snow storm has been dismal all around. All the culprits will have some kind of excuse, mostly implausible.
When I was near City Hall a few days ago there was no evidence that the sidewalks there had been cleared recently. Mountain View Cemetery probably has more than a kilometer of sidewalks surrounding the property and none of them had been cleared. There are miles of sidewalks around the schools, no effort had been made to clear the sidewalks around John Oliver.
Where is Translink and Coast Mountain Bus Company in this? I use transit and in the past week I saw one person clear the snow from a bus stop and I’m not sure if he was a local merchant or some one hired by transit. Generally it was a case of scrambling over two feet of accumulated snow.
Because the curb lanes were piled with snow it was a common site to see cars parked in the road which made a bad driving situation worse for cars, trucks and buses.
Let’s not pretend we were taken by surprise. It’s happened before and it will happen again.
Thank you for emphasizing what *we* can do about this. I’m tired of hearing complaints about the city (Burnaby in my case) not clearing the residential streets. The city can’t magic more plows into existence (they reported fielding up to 8 at a time during the first few days), and that would require increased taxes I very much doubt the complainers would want to pay – especially given the rarity of the situation.
But I keep thinking that if half the houses in my neighborhood (exempting old folks etc.) put in a couple of hours over a period of a few days we could take care of it ourselves. I’ve been spending a few minutes here and there to clear gutters and ruts in our back alley behind several houses over the past few days. It really doesn’t take much to make a dramatic difference. A half hour on the street would go a long way, but there’s no point if I’m the only one. It’s a pity this doesn’t happen, especially with so many people presumably stuck at home.
Mind you, I’m not complaining much. The first few days were miraculous as the whole neighborhood left their cars behind to walk to the local mall (Brentwood) for supplies. There was a wonderful feeling of community that’s largely absent when people drive most places (ours is an early postwar suburb with decent sidewalks and shopping etc. nearby, so people do also walk). One of our neighbors kindly shoveled half our sidewalk the first day, and the favor got returned back and forth several times (though I think he won the contest). An older man with a house at the end a block (three lengths of sidewalk, probably at 55 feet each) did a decent job. True, about 2-30% of the sidewalks were never cleared, but the other 70-80% were.
The City of Vancouver didn’t even clear the sidewalk or pathways at Library Square.
On the walk in to work, I’d choose a route that passed along the fronts of buildings with large corporate landlords – like Telus and Vancouver Centre – those sidewalks would be regularly cleared.
I think the problem with residents clearing the sidewalks in front of their homes is that fact that most people don’t even own shovels in Vancouver!
Shame to all the businesses that couldn’t even make an attempt at clearing the snow from their sidewalks. This will not be forgotten.
Major FAIL award to the City of Port Moody – no effort whatsoever to clear snow from pedestrian bridges or sidewalks.