Tag: pedestrian

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.

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?