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State of Snow Clearing in Toronto for Non-Motorists

After a heavy snowfall, the snowploughs shift the snow back onto the sidewalk, so I get a bonus workout shovelling it back onto the street again.
 
I believe the law states that the sidewalk must be cleared 12 hours (or a fairly large number of hours) after a storm. So, "after" means, I suppose, the system has completely cleared the area? That would probably mean some time today...of course, I don't expect it to be done.

Another issue of snow clearance that I would like to bring up is the bias towards certain neighborhoods! It was interesting to see that my road just next to Scarborough wasn't plowed for days after last Friday, but all the side streets in Leaside were done. Interesting...
 
nfitz said:
Why? There are places that get a lot more snow that Toronto that have homeowners and businesses responsible for clearing their sidewalk. Why would one want to expend all that money to purchase, maintain, and operate the extra equipment necessary to do this, when it's only needed 10 or so times a year. Any resident or homeowner is already doing some, and often a lot of shovelling. The sidewalk is pretty minor for most people compared to what they already deal with.
Click to expand...
Why should homeowners be responsible for the safety and ease of use of the city's sidewalks? Do we expect homeowners to repair cracks in the concrete, or to ensure weeds aren't overtaking the sidewalk? Those with corner lots would disagree that it's pretty minor.
 
That's always seemed rather odd to me, too.

This morning, as I left the Winter Palace for "work", I noticed a small City truck on my street, with an employee scattering salt here and there on the sidewalk in front of the hoses that hadn't cleared away the snow. That's hardly an incentive for homeowners to be civic minded.

Also, I question whether the City is actually fining homeowners who don't clear away their snow. Every winter on my street usually the same houses have thick sheets of ice out front of them on the sidewalk in the coldest weather, often for several weeks until a warm spell comes and it all melts.
 
Urban Shocker said:
That's always seemed rather odd to me, too.

This morning, as I left the Winter Palace for "work", I noticed a small City truck on my street, with an employee scattering salt here and there on the sidewalk in front of the hoses that hadn't cleared away the snow. That's hardly an incentive for homeowners to be civic minded.

Also, I question whether the City is actually fining homeowners who don't clear away their snow. Every winter on my street usually the same houses have thick sheets of ice out front of them on the sidewalk in the coldest weather, often for several weeks until a warm spell comes and it all melts.
Click to expand...

If no one complains, nothing happens.
 
I think we need to give the City a break here. The amount of snow we've had recently is pretty unusual and I don't think we can expect the City to have the streets in a spotless condition immediately after the snow stops falling. I remember Montreal winters where there were massive snow banks and enormous amounts of slush at street corners after similar snow falls and they experience a lot more snow than we do.

Montreal, however, has crews clearing sidewalks, but I'm not sure that it's worth it to have something similar here in Toronto. I'm pretty sure no one would want to pay for it once they know what it would cost. In any case, there are cities in Canada that experience more snow than Toronto that also
do not have sidewalks cleared by the city.

As for me, shoveling the sidewalk in front of my house is not a big deal compared to the driveway. I must have spent five hours in the past 24 shoveling today. Shoveling the sidewalk probably took no more than twenty minutes. I'm not sure I'm that sympathetic to those with corner lots. One would expect them to know what they were getting themselves into when they bought their property.

The biggest problem with the requirement that property owners clear the sidewalk is associated with the elderly or those who otherwise are unable to do so. I believe that in those cases, the city will go out and do it for them for free.
 
re: clearing suburban sidewalks

I don't know about the rest of suburban Toronto, but here in North Scarborough many small residential streets only have sidewalks on one side of the street. At the same time, in the 905 many residential streets have no sidewalks at all. I'm not against clearing snow from sidewalks at all (I always make sure that when I'm shoveling snow that the sidewalk in front of my house is cleared), but won't the enforcement be unfair, and lead people to flock to neighbourhoods with no sidewalks?

re: deep puddles at intersections

I don't have a solution for getting rid of them, but I'm sure that it would be beneficial if we can get engineers to design a way to get rid of those puddles.

Or we could adopt a 2,000-year old solution...

b14.jpg
 
it was a large snowfall no doubt around 30-35 cm....
 
Ponding of water at intersections can be attributed to the fact that catch basin placement is based on tropical conditions where snow is not an issue. Catch basins are always placed just upstream of an intersection so that storm water is collected just before intersecting the crosswalk. This minimizes the flow of water that pedestrians have to walk through as they cross the street.

Catch basins are placed at regular intervals, therefore the next downstream catch basin could easily be 50 feet or more from the crosswalk. If city crews were to effectively prevent crosswalk ponding, they'd have to clear at least 50 feet of snow downstream. At the same time, the next upstream catch basin, which would only be effective if water defied gravity and flowed uphill, may only be 5 feet away.

When the snow clears, see for yourself! Catch basins are always upstream of cross walks.
 
A lot of the ponding is made worse because of the curb cuts at all the corners as well. There's got to be a way they could minimize the length of curb that's cut flush to the roadways. Maintaining the curb height would help to at least keep some of the water in the street as opposed to the sidewalk.

And the best snowbank ever award has to go to U of T. It's actually worth making a trip to King's College Circle just to see the 15 foot high snowbanks. I've seen many people taking pictures the last couple days.
 
Couldn't they theoretically install smaller drains that ran from the intersection to the upstream catchbasin? It would cost more, but the slush pooling really is a drag.
 
Oh - and just in case anyone is keeping score. It seems after this most recent snowfall, the sidewalks are in better condition than the roads (Wellington is a disaster, and Adelaide is still surprisingly bad)
 
TKTKTK said:
Oh - and just in case anyone is keeping score. It seems after this most recent snowfall, the sidewalks are in better condition than the roads (Wellington is a disaster, and Adelaide is still surprisingly bad)
Click to expand...

Cant say I agree. Most of my walking was done on the streets today because the sidewalks were a mess.
 
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