Fight for sidewalk clearing in Toronto's core continues into budget cycle

Residents have sent at least 2,000 emails to the mayor

Toronto.com
Jan. 14, 2020
Megan Delaire

As the City of Toronto’s 2020 budget cycle begins in earnest, residents behind the Clear Our Sidewalks campaign are pushing as hard as ever for snow-free sidewalks in the city’s core.

Since the city ruled in favour of a small sidewalk snow-clearing pilot in the old City of Toronto over clearing all sidewalks, a letter-writing campaign organized by Clear Our Sidewalks has seen 2,000 emails sent to Mayor John Tory. The emails urge Tory to make additional funds available in the 2020 budget for new sidewalk snow-clearing equipment.

John Plumadore leads the Deer Park Residents Group, which launched the initiative. He said the weeks between the release of the draft budget on Jan. 10 and budget approval in February are a critical time for residents hoping to effect change.

“Our letters go directly to the mayor, so we’re hoping to accelerate that between now and February,” he said. “It’s our last chance to get any action for this year, otherwise the pilot goes into 2022, and that’s pushing it back too far.”

The City of Toronto mechanically clears snow from sidewalks in suburban neighbourhoods in the former municipalities of North York, Scarborough and Etobicoke, but not in neighbourhoods of Old Toronto -- where residents are required to clear the sidewalks in front of their homes.

Last winter, residents downtown and in the Yonge and St. Clair and Harbord Village areas began to collectively pressure the city to plow their sidewalks.

In October, the city announced it would plow an additional 250 kilometres of sidewalks this winter as part of a new pilot, leaving 1,150 kilometres of sidewalks in the core unplowed.

Toronto-St. Paul’s Coun. Josh Matlow said the pilot is too small to make an impact.

“In reality, it’s about one-tenth of all streets remaining,” he said. “It won’t make a big difference to a lot of people.”

As long as the city only clears some sidewalks and not others, he said, concerns around equity and safety remain -- regardless of any pilot.

“There is something fundamentally wrong with that with respect to equity,” he said. “But my biggest concern is the impact on the safety and accessibility for residents.”

Toronto's medical officer of health quantified that impact in a 2016 report, which stated that -- between 2006 and 2015 -- emergency rooms in the city received 30,000 visits from residents over the age of 15, due to slips and falls on icy sidewalks. The median age was 51.

Since the city announced the pilot program in October, Plumadore said the Clear Our Sidewalks letter-writing campaign has received support from residents throughout the downtown core, which, in turn, places the group in a better position to support another city councillor who has taken on the cause.

“Councillor Mike Layton, who is on the budget committee, is going to try to get funding for more equipment to not have to delay this any longer,” he said. “So we’re supporting him on that and hopefully we will get the mayor on board.”

While Coun. Layton could not be reached for comment, his office confirmed he hopes to appeal to the budget committee for additional funding for sidewalk snow clearing machines before the city finalizes the budget in February.