This photo is a year or two old. The whole area is completely buried right now after the blizzard of the century but I’m posting the photo because I added a story about it to the citizen science data gathering project designed by Matt Milner. If you have stories about your experiences getting around St. John’s in winter, especially accidents, injuries, hazards or the state of sidewalks in general, please have a look and add them to the map. Here’s the story that goes with this photo, in case you didn’t get here from Matt’s map: There’s a staircase that goes from Queen’s Rd. to Chapel St. that is always beautifully shovelled and salted yet it is truly the stairs from nowhere to nowhere because the sidewalk is never cleared on Chapel St. or that side of Queen’s Rd. It’s an example that I’m very familiar with since it’s on my route between home and work but there are others like this too. This illustrates two things: 1) the power of shovels, which might be better applied removing snow from some of the hazards documented by Matt’s project; 2) the City’s resources could sometimes be used better if the situation could be better analyzed. (Note: In the photo, you can see that it actually has been used because the snow wasn’t very deep but when the snow is deeper, it’s impossible.)
Update Jan. 24:
Even in the current state of emergency, they came and shovelled the staircase again. This time they did actually shovel a path out to the street, maybe because the depth of snow made to really clear just how futile it would be otherwise. Usually they don’t shovel a path, just leave it blocked at the bottom. Meanwhile, I was talking to a colleague who mentioned another such staircase that has even less traffic than this one but is also regularly shovelled and salted.
Road Rage 