City council began the process Monday night of deciding whether to extend snow clearing and ice control to a further 20 kilometres of sidewalks around Prince George.
Staff was directed to come back with a cost estimate on providing the service after council was presented with a report outlining the extent of the issue.
In all, 84 stretches adding up to 19.6 kilometres are going without the service. Of that total, 13.9 kilometres, adding up to 70 stretches, are sidewalks adjacent to roads and five of them are bus stops along Highway 97 North. The rest are offset, usually with a one-metre boulevard between the sidewalk and the road.
A handful of reason explain why they are not being cleared, according to a staff report:
- A lack of storage space along boulevards next to curb-adjacent sidewalks due to the doubling and tripling of driveway widths in new developments.
- Creation of a "bathtub" effect when snow banks emerge on both sides of an offset sidewalk because the melt water has nowhere to drain when the temperature goes up and then freezes when it drops, leading to a hazardous walking.
- A number the spots are in outlying areas, meaning a dedicated trip must be made to clear a lone sidewalk link and the additional travel time can compromise the city's efforts to meet deadlines for finishing work elsewhere in the city.
- Higher windrows as all sidewalk and roadway snow would be deposited on the boulevard opposite the sidewalk, doubling the expected volume.
- A higher cost for the service in general because more crews and travel time to snow dumps would be needed to clear windrows. As well, there would also be the added cost of applying traction and de-icing materials to cleared sidewalks.
Possibilities suggested by staff for dealing with the situation were leaving things as they are, making residents responsible for clearing sidewalks along their property frontages - as seen in Kamloops, Edmonton and Red Deer - and adding more equipment and crew either through city staff or contractors, to expand the service.
"Twenty kilometres is a lot of sidewalks that aren't getting plowed," Coun. Brian Skakun commented. "Obviously, it's an access issue, it's definitely a safety issue especially with an aging population."
Coun. Jillian Merrick cast doubt on the proposal to have residents clear the sidewalks.
"I think there are many residents who would be keen to help out with this monumental task but there are also residents who would not and unfortunately, a continuous pathway is important in a snow-clearing program," she said. "And I live in a neighbourhood were there is a lot of those offset sidewalks and I can tell you people barely mow the lawn on the city boulevard never mind clear the snow."
Merrick also discounted the bathtub effect, saying people will still walk over the unplowed snow and create an uneven surface of ice during a freeze-thaw, "which is even more dangerous than having a small flat surface of ice, so I think they do need to be plowed."
On new residential areas, Merrick suggested including snow storage areas in development plans.
Mayor Lyn Hall said there are stretches where the sidewalk is plowed in when the road is cleared.
"We're having pedestrian traffic travel along the roadway, so I'm interested in seeing what the potential costs are," he said.
In all, there are 200 kilometres of sidewalks within city limits. The city deploys three trackless sidewalk plows and one tracked sidewalk plow on a day-shift, afternoon-shift and night-shift rotation.
