Do we do too much snow removal?
Le Devoir’s Jeanne Corriveau notes that Montreal does more snow clearance than any other city its size, and although there are often complaints about it on social media, residents have shown themselves generally satisfied with the process when surveyed. Among others, she talks to Luc Ferrandez, now a commentator, who thinks we do too much snow removal.
Every now and then someone echoes a point made here, that in other cities it’s the responsibility of the owner or resident to clear the sidewalk outside their place, so maybe we should do that here. This is a terrible idea. We chip in to get the sidewalks cleared with one pass by a chenillette, and that’s the right thing to do. A patchwork of some clearing, lousy clearing and no clearing would help nobody and would leave the sidewalk impassable. Some residents are bound to be old or disabled, some away on vacation, some houses vacant, some people simply unwilling to do it – you could never get the results we get now, and that’s even not asking the key question, which is where the sidewalk snow would go. Not everyone has a front yard.
jeather 11:56 on 2024-01-22 Permalink
Yes, I absolutely don’t see “let’s just stop cleaning the sidewalks” as a winning argument. The sidewalks are a part of the transit network, and not less important than streets.
“Ne pourrait-on pas envoyer la neige sur les terrains privés comme cela se fait dans toutes les banlieues du Québec ?” Where exactly? The reason suburbs only do it should be obvious.
Joey 12:21 on 2024-01-22 Permalink
Shame that the city abandoned the heated street/sidewalk component of the Ste-Catherine rebuild without transferring it over to some other street – with climate change causing more and more ‘in between’ conditions, where major snowfalls are as likely as quick freeze-thaw cycles that make every outdoor surface dangerous to walk/bike/drive on without some quick maintenance, geothermal surface heating could be an inevitable solution.
Anyway, this piece really mixes up several different tactics and that’s too bad – equating a chenillette clearing sidewalks by pushing snow into banks on either side and at corners with a snow removal operation that enables street parking is counterproductive. IMO the city has got the snow removal part down pat; it’s the sidewalks that don’t get enough quick love when the snow and ice arrive.
DeWolf 12:32 on 2024-01-22 Permalink
Montreal does more snow clearance than any other city its size because it snows more here than in any other city its size. The only other cities in North America with as much snow are Buffalo and Rochester, and they’re both much smaller and much less dense. Globally, there’s Sapporo (pop 2 million) which gets an astonishing 600cm of snow per year, but that’s about it. We’re pretty special.
Clearing sidewalks is essential and like Kate I think it would be a failure if we leave it up to individuals. That may work in suburban cities where there are a lot of single-family houses and it’s clear who is responsible, but how would it work in a city of plexes?
The one area I think things could be improved is in the actual snow removal. That’s undoubtedly the most expensive part of our snow operations, both because of the manpower involved and the damage all the heavy machinery and intensive scraping does to road infrastructure. And what it comes down to, really, is preserving on-street parking, because if weren’t for all the cars taking up road space, we’d have a perfect buffer zone in which to pile up snow without physically removing it.
I’ve mentioned the idea of community garages before. Some level of car ownership is inevitable, but it’s a huge waste of space for every single street to be dominated by car storage, so how about we displace at least some of it to off-street spots that can also offer EV chargers and secure bike storage? We can build social housing on top. If it allows us to reduce our annual slow clearance by X percent, these garages could pay for themselves after several years.
DeWolf 12:40 on 2024-01-22 Permalink
I mentioned Sapporo and began looking into how they handle their incredible amount of snow. It turns out their snow removal budget is almost identical to ours, which seems like good value given that they get roughly 2.5 times more snow than us.
From what I can tell, there are two innovations in Sapporo that we don’t have. The first is snow gutters: there are sewers under most streets with openings for snow to be manually dumped. The snow then melts in the sewers and flows into the river. The second is heated streets in central areas.
Daisy 12:45 on 2024-01-22 Permalink
I lived for one year in an Ontario city (with 160 cm snowfall/year) that left sidewalk snow-clearing to the owners/residents. As a pedestrian, it was horrible. You’re walking along, one house cleared, next two uncleared, next one cleared, next one not… You never know which side of the street to walk on because neither is likely to be ” all done” like it is when the chenillette has passed. A lot of the time you resort to just walking on the street itself.
Kate 13:14 on 2024-01-22 Permalink
Daisy, that’s exactly the result I’d expect.
Nicholas 13:24 on 2024-01-22 Permalink
You can find photos from before they did pickup, where they just pushed the snow to the side because the horses and carriages had stables, so you just needed a small track in the middle for them. If we had garages for all the cars that would take up a lot of space, and cost a lot of money. But if we work on encouraging fewer and fewer cars we can turn some of that space to other uses (such as plazas or plants), some of which can hold snow (because fewer people sit or look at flowers in the winter), and then there’s less pickup required. (The cause and effect go both ways.) But it’s a slow process, because people like their cars, even in “anti-car” Plateau.
Kevin 15:19 on 2024-01-22 Permalink
Even if you don’t, personally, drive, we couldn’t leave mounds of snow on the sides of the road because we’d need access for taxis and firetrucks and ambulances and whatnot.
If we believe that people with limited mobility have all the same rights as those without physical disabilities, we need to clear snow and ensure sidewalks are usable.
Mozai 01:24 on 2024-01-23 Permalink
In Ontario the residents are legally obliged to clear their sidewalks — it’s been the law since the ’80s, and yet it’s not enforced, so it doesn’t happen. And if that’s “just an Ontario thing”: the sidewalks here in Plateau are constantly decorated in garbage because people can’t be arsed to put trash out on the correct days despite the warning tags on their trash and flyers put in mailboxes a few times each year to remind people. If you can’t be arsed to carry a bag once a week, I don’t trust you to shovel and spread sand each day.
JaneyB 11:26 on 2024-01-23 Permalink
Toronto’s ‘Be nice, clear your ice’ policy only works because they get maybe 2cm of snow per winter. Here, we have several feet of snow to deal with plus many people already have to dig out their cars twice after a storm. Our chenillettes are a fantastic service. In my neighbourhood, they seem to pass and sand within an hour of a major storm. It’s fast, efficient, and uniform. What’s not to like? Ferrandez is just full of it. People need to be able to walk/roll safely. Also, of course, lots of people are not able to clear snow due to age, infirmity, kids, or lack of time.
Ian 14:01 on 2024-01-23 Permalink
I used to live in Toronto and yeah, you know what doesn’t ever get shovelled? Empty storefronts, parking lots, construction sites, stores that are closed that day … I lived right on Queen street and maybe 2/3 of the sidewalks were consistently cleared, at best.