Sidewalk shoveling should be citizens’ job

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 26/11/2021 (1028 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

IF you winter in Winnipeg, your vocabulary includes the phrase “shovel out,” as in: “Lots of snow fell overnight, we have to shovel out.”

If you are one of those wonderful Winnipeggers who helps other people get through winter, you might also shovel out the sidewalk of an elderly neighbour, or shovel out a vehicle that is hung up in a snowbank and has stranded its driver who, unlike you, doesn’t carry a shovel in their trunk when the snow starts.

Even these good neighbours — winter warriors who use their shovels as tools of kindness — usually stop short of doing public walkways. City sidewalks, city responsibility.

It doesn’t have to be that way. In fact, it shouldn’t be that way. The owners of homes and businesses should shovel the city-owned sidewalks that border their properties, and it should be mandatory.

The argument to offload this responsibility onto citizens — and the argument is strong — starts with the obvious. Go for a walk outside. Leaving the job up to the city has left public sidewalks in appalling condition since a moderately-large snowfall a couple of weeks ago was followed by melty temperatures and then a quick freeze, leaving many sections of sidewalk like paths of ice.

People with mobility issues have become shut-ins. Pedestrians who risk sidewalks do it gingerly, fearful of falling and injuring a hip or knee at a time when, by all accounts, Winnipeg hospitals can’t offer rapid attention to people who need hip or knee surgery.

Many people blame city hall, saying crews should have more cleared the sidewalks more promptly, before freezing temperatures turned slush into rock-hard ruts that will stick around longer than our out-of-town Christmas visitors.

If people can temper their frustration with a smidgen of objectivity, however, we should consider the full scope of the challenge. There are about 3,000 kilometres of sidewalks in Winnipeg, partly because of this city’s unchecked urban sprawl. Expecting crews to clear so much sidewalk rapidly is perhaps unreasonable, especially since they also need to clear the streets and keep up with the relatively new active-transportation demand for cleared bike routes.

But we shouldn’t give up and resign ourselves to dangerously-slippery sidewalks. We need safe, passable sidewalks for our kids to walk to school, for our seniors to walk to bus stops. There must be a solution.

There is a solution, and most other Canadian cities have already found it. Make residents do it. Winnipeg is the only major city on the Canadian Prairies where the city is still responsible for clearing city sidewalks.

Saskatoon, Calgary and Edmonton have already shifted the obligation onto the owners of homes and businesses to clear city sidewalks. Regina’s bylaw begins Jan. 1.

Outside of the Prairies, cities that have adopted such a bylaw include Toronto, Hamilton, Windsor and Kitchener. A typical bylaw is like the one in Vancouver: residents must clear sidewalks by 10 a.m. the day after every snowfall, with $250 fines for home owners who don’t.

Winnipeg council should learn from these other cities and introduce such a bylaw, but before it does, it should consider how to deal respectfully with citizens who, perhaps from advanced age or infirmity, can’t clear their section. In Saskatoon, homeowners get 48 hours after a snowfall to clear the city walks and, for those who don’t, the city does it for them but then recoups the cost through taxes.

Saskatoon’s system seems harsh, penalizing citizens who are physically unable to wield shovels, or perhaps are away on vacation. A more courteous way for Winnipeg to proceed is to have a verified registry of addresses whose residents have legitimate reasons not to shovel, and have those sidewalks cleared by volunteers or paid workers if necessary.

Until 2020, Take Pride Winnipeg had an initiative called Snow Angels, which paired youth volunteers with seniors in need of snow clearing. It also included a partnership with the Hire-a-Refugee organization.

A proposal to make it mandatory for Winnipeggers to shovel city sidewalks was made by city administrators in 2015, but the idea lacked council support. The time is right to try again.

The benefits of such a bylaw will start on the surface level, literally. Winnipeg sidewalks will be cleaned better, while the snow is fresh, rather than waiting until city crews get around to it.

The benefits will go deeper, though. As Winnipeg gradually emerges from the isolation required by the pandemic, shovelling a portion of city sidewalk will be every citizen’s hands-on opportunity to show they care about their city and the fellow residents who rely on the neighborhood sidewalks.

Everybody remember to stretch.

carl.degurse@freepress.mb.ca

Carl DeGurse is a member of the Free Press editorial board.