The following article appeared in the January 11 edition of the Guelph Tribune:
It might be a tempting budget target, but eliminating mechanized plowing of sidewalks wouldn’t save the city a great deal of money, says city operations director Derek McCaughan.
“It’s not as huge a saving as people might think,” said McCaughan, who gave a rough estimate of $100,000 in savings if council were to make residents clear the sidewalks in front of their homes. He said the previous council twice rejected the idea of getting rid of the sidewalk service to save money, and his department hasn’t proposed eliminating it in the city’s 2008 operating budget. Council will deal with the budget in February.
“If there is consideration (of eliminating the service), it will have to come as a directive from council . . . which I have not received directly yet,” he said in an interview Tuesday. As it stands, the budget proposed by the operations department doesn’t contain any reduction in services.
McCaughan said he’s heard that some councillors are concerned about the sidewalk snow plow service and are looking for ways to free up money to help pay for more frequent Guelph Transit bus service.
He said that if council were to eliminate sidewalk plowing, there would be savings in fuel and staff time and the city might be able to get rid of some of its 13 sidewalk snowplows, nine of which are dedicated for use outside of the downtown.
However, as a landowner, the city would still need to plow a lot of sidewalks adjacent to parks and other city-owned property, he said. Eliminating the service means council would have to pass a bylaw compelling residents to shovel and de-ice sidewalks in front of their property, and council would have to decide how to enforce this, McCaughan said. As well, he said, the city might have to continue clearing sidewalks for residents with physical challenges who are unable to clear their sidewalks.
Mechanized plows are unable to clear sidewalks down to bare pavement because sidewalk pavement is uneven, and if residents were forced to take over the task they would be able to do a better job of clearing the sidewalks, McCaughan said. “We are not as efficient as we’d like to be” in clearing the city’s 600 kilometres of sidewalks, he said.
City hall hears from people in wheelchairs and scooters complaining that they find it hard to travel on sidewalks cleared by the mechanized plows, he noted. “All we can do is acknowledge that.”
However, McCaughan said some criticisms of sidewalk plows are based on misapprehensions. When people see plows working on sidewalks that seem to be clear, they sometimes don’t realize the plows are spreading sand and salt on sidewalk puddle areas to deal with freeze-thaw cycles.
“To those who don’t know we are doing that, it appears to be a waste of resources.”
As well as clearing sidewalks, the sidewalk plows have been clearing bus stops of snow on a regular basis since December. This started after Guelph Transit ran into problems getting a contractor to clear the bus stops, McCaughan said.
Devoting some of the sidewalk plow resources to clear the city’s 700 bus stops means it now takes three to four days after a storm to clear all sidewalks in the city, compared with two or three days previously, he said.
City-wide clearing of sidewalks is done when at least eight kilometres of snow falls.
A city hall report released late last week said bus stops need to be kept clear of snow to encourage use of transit as an alternative form of transportation and to lessen the chances of mishap as passengers embark and disembark from buses. It said snow-covered bus stops represent a particular challenge to elderly and infirm riders.
Staff will continue to give priority to sidewalks that are heavily used by pedestrians, so they are cleared within 24 hours after the end of a storm, the report said.
On his Ward 2 online blog, Coun. Ian Findlay suggested last month that discontinuing sidewalk snow clearing in residential neighbourhoods is one idea being examined by council to balance part of the cost of a proposal to boost the frequency of city buses.
“Guelph is one of the few municipalities offering this expensive and largely ineffectual service to its residents,” Findlay wrote on the blog.
“If property owners were responsible for the sidewalks in front of their homes, an improved service could be achieved with a saving to the municipality,” he wrote. “Residents take pride in their homes and properties . . . and would be diligent with the clearing of ice and snow on sidewalks.”
Findlay noted that the legitimate concern over residents with physical challenges has been addressed in Hamilton through a neighbourhood volunteer program to assist residents who are unable to clear their sidewalks.
Sidewalk plows now tend to 700 bus stops