The 2014 consultation on snow clearing in St. John’s used several other cities for comparison: Mount Pearl, Fredericton, Halifax, Québec City and Saguenay. It’s hard to find a good comparison for St. John’s because it really is unique. But the authors believed that these cities together represented most of the challenges St. John’s faces: hills, buildings directly on the street, old infrastructure, heavy snowfall. A key finding was that St. John’s actually had a higher standard of street clearing than other cities but a lower standard of sidewalk clearing. In other words, drivers were more of a priority here than in other cities and pedestrians less of a priority. I’m not sure if that’s still true or not because there have been major improvements in St. John’s sidewalk clearing since the consultation and the election of a new mayor and council who are much more supportive of active transit and accessibility. What I am sure of is that we still have a long way to go here in St. John’s before we can say that pedestrians are a priority.
In an earlier post, I compared St. John’s to Moncton — very different cities but two things they have in common are a somewhat similar size and a similar amount of snowfall. On average, St. John’s receives 335 cm of snow each year and Moncton 311. Moncton cut its sidewalk clearing budget in 2015. But what’s interesting is to compare the attitudes in Moncton and here. The cuts in Moncton led to only one side of some residential streets being cleared instead of both sides and this was considered to put children at risk when walking to school because they would have to cross the street. Here, most residential streets still have no sidewalks at all and even major streets may have only one side cleared, or none. Last year, Moncton bought two new sidewalk plows to help bring service back to former levels. City Councillor Bryan Butler said in support of improved sidewalk clearing, “‘When you turn on your tap, you expect water. When you put your garbage out, you expect it to be picked up. When you go to walk on your sidewalk, you expect it to be plowed and your streets plowed, you know.”
Would anybody in St. John’s say “When you walk on your sidewalk, you expect it to be plowed?”
Road Rage 