Month: February 2024

Freeze and thaw cycles

Woman standing in snow beside an enormous icicle

I took my little grandson to the library on Saturday to get his first library card. The librarian asked his ward number and showed me where I could look it up. “That’s okay. I know which ward he lives in,” I said. She was surprised–“Nobody knows which ward they live in! They always have to look it up!” “I’m obsessed with municipal politics,” I told her apologetically. I’m not sure why I feel the need to apologize but anyway. This particular post is probably even nerdier than most but I assume most people who read this blog share my obsession so here it is, freeze and thaw cycles!

One of several excuses frequently given for why our sidewalks can’t be cleared properly is freeze and thaw cycles. We have a lot of them here in St. John’s. Anybody who walks around the city can tell you that. But are we an outlier? For some reason, in all the years I’ve been fighting for safe spaces for pedestrians, I’ve never looked that up. So I did. And, as with all the other excuses, yes, we do have challenging conditions but no, we are not an outlier. Saguenay QC gets almost as many freeze and thaw cycles as we do and almost as much snow and they clear the majority of their sidewalks. Both Halifax and Moncton actually get more cycles than we do–only marginally more but still, and they clear their sidewalks too. Halifax clears all of them (in fact one page of their website says they have 989 km of sidewalks and another page says they clear 1000!) I know, I know, Halifax gets a lot less snow than we do but we’re talking about freeze and thaw cycles. Moncton clears most of their sidewalks. I couldn’t find figures but if you look at their map you can see that the vast majority are cleared. Also, I’ve walked around Moncton in winter and they just do (see photo below). They get almost as much snow as we do and it’s a similar size city to St. John’s. Maybe we should ask them how they do it.

Sidewalk in a quiet residential neighbourhood in Moncton, cleared to bare pavement and salted.

I didn’t give the actual numbers for the freeze and thaw cycles because it’s complicated by rapid climate change but all the cities I mentioned are in the range of 65-75-ish per year and going down over time. Here’s the interactive map I used in case you’d like to have a closer look or check other cities.

Councillor Korab Responds

Here’s another update on my earlier post, Letter to City Hall. Last week Councillor Jamie Korab, Lead for Public Works, answered one of my questions on CBC Radio. I asked how much had been added to sidewalk snowclearing since 2021 and when timelines would be shortened? Councillor Korab said that timelines have been changed from 4-7 days to within 5 days and distance cleared has gone up from 161 km to 175 km. He also sort of answered another question about whether the City is enforcing the bylaw against dumping snow on sidewalks cleared by the City. He said “fines vary.” One more thing he mentioned that I found interesting is that the City decides which sidewalks to clear “based on vehicle and pedestrian traffic.” I’m not sure how they know this. They may have some way of tracking vehicles but I’ve never seen any pedestrian counters in St. John’s. So I’m left with new questions: in what sense do fines vary and how are these decisions made? And how is pedestrian traffic measured?

Hitting the streets for sidewalks

Too small to clear the sidewalk?

(Alt text: Photo of a parked sidewalk plow)

This morning I got up early to go for a cold but sunny walk with CBC reporter Darrell Roberts to check out walking conditions three days after the latest storm. You can hear about what we saw here.

Darrell also did an excellent multi-platform report last week on sidewalks and safe routes to school. Thank you so much, Darrell and CBC, for your unwavering support on this fundamental human rights issue!

Something I may not have said as clearly as I would have liked in these interviews is this: Why do spokespeople for the City of St. John’s say over and over that it’s too challenging to provide safe routes for pedestrians when they would never say that for drivers? On Monday, Lynnann Winsor, deputy manager of public works, said that all the streets had been plowed at least once but sidewalks would have to wait as “a lot of sidewalk snow-clearing equipment is too small for the current amount of snow.” Last week, Councillor Jamie Korab, Lead for Public Works, said “hopefully in future years more money will be invested” in sidewalks and then went on to talk in some detail about what they do “to make sure all roads are clear” even though he had been explicitly asked about sidewalks.

I understand that conditions are a factor but that excuse is not used for leaving streets uncleared. That just never happens. I guess my real question is why are pedestrians considered expendable when conditions get challenging?

Responses from City Hall

Update on yesterday’s post: I received two responses. Councillor Maggie Burton said she will find answers to my questions but it may take a while. I’ll post them as I get them. Councillor Sandy Hickman said that staff were just getting going because the snow had only ended around 4:00 AM. It is true that more work is still being done on sidewalks but I sent the following response on that:

“I understand your point but the streets were down to bare pavement while there had not been even a preliminary pass on that stretch of sidewalk on Kenmount Rd. by 5:00 PM. Pedestrians and people waiting for the bus had to walk and stand in rush hour traffic as it got dark, the most dangerous time of day. We know that more and more people in the city are using the bus as their primary mode of transportation. The photo below shows the kind of conditions they often have to endure to do so.

The problem is not so much timing as severe under-funding. There is only so much staff can do with inadequate resources. In 2020 former councillor Ian Froude stated that Halifax, for example, spent about twice as much as St. John’s per kilometre on sidewalk clearing even though they receive less than half the snow load. What is our current amount budgeted for sidewalk clearing? This is a budget item that has a severe and indeed life-threatening impact on the lives of many residents of our city.”