Toronto has removed thousands of tonnes of snow from city streets in the past week. Then why are sidewalks still so dangerous?

Need proof the city prioritizes drivers over people on foot? Just look out your window at who is moving safely down the road and who isn’t.

thestar.com
Jan. 26, 2022
Emma Teitel

Last week almost everyone laughed at the premier’s little shovel -- a tool that looked better suited to digging a moat around a child’s sand castle than digging a car out of a massive snow bank amid a once-in-a-decade Toronto storm.

But a week on from that storm and the joke is no longer on Doug Ford and his little shovel. It’s on us. It’s on Toronto: a city that much like the Ontario premier, thinks it’s successfully digging itself out of a ditch. Meanwhile, the snow is still sitting there, piled high around our ears. Or falling once again.

Five to 10 cm of fresh powder. That’s what meteorologists predicted Torontonians were in for this Monday morning as Toronto Mayor John Tory tweeted out the following update about last week’s offering: “So far, crews have removed 17,346 tonnes of snow, completed snow removal on 216 km of roads, dumped 5,782 loads of snow from across the city.”

Here’s the thing: it’s true the city is working 24 hours a day to clear the snow. It can’t suspend snowflakes mid-air. According to Barbara Gray, the general manager of transportation services for the city of Toronto, speaking at a snow dump site on Monday, “the snow we received in just 15 hours last Monday was more than all the snow we received each January for nearly the past two decades.”

Kudos to city staff who are doing their best in frigid temperatures.

But with all due respect to the city and its mayor, a detailed data breakdown of snow removal operations like the kind above means nothing to the thousands of pedestrians and cyclists who put their lives at risk every time they step out their doors to travel somewhere -- anywhere -- in these conditions.

It doesn’t matter to the pedestrian with mobility issues that a billion tonnes of snow was removed from city streets last week if the sidewalk in front of their bus stop is dangerously inaccessible today.

I mean this quite literally. Over the weekend I was trying and failing to push a stroller along Kingston Road in Scarborough (the snow was piled up so high along the sidewalks I had to carry the stroller home with my daughter in it -- a shrieking queen in a tiny sedan chair) when I noticed a blind man trying and failing in his own right to cross the street.

The sidewalk entrances at this particular stretch of Kingston Road -- like so many others -- were obstructed thanks to huge mounds of snow. As a result, the man in question was walking into oncoming traffic and attempting to traverse a snow bank with his cane as a guide. I’m not kidding when I say that he came close to death a few times.

So did we. Another pedestrian and I helped the man get to his bus stop, though not without Toronto’s impatient motorists speeding through the intersection right by our heads, adding an extra layer of perilousness to an already perilous mission. God forbid they should slow down on their recently paved roads to allow us to scale a snow-capped sidewalk.

This story isn’t a one-off. Social media was full of similar tales and photos this weekend and early this week: kids walking to school on the street because the sidewalks were inaccessible, cyclists slipping on unplowed bike lanes, seniors shut up in their homes unable to walk to the store.

If you need proof that the city prioritizes people in cars above people on foot just look out your window at who is moving safely down the road and who isn’t.

Of course, the blame doesn’t lie with the city alone.

People who don’t shovel their sidewalks and walkways -- lazy landlords and construction developers included -- do their part and then some to make the roads unsafe for parents with strollers, the elderly and pedestrians with disabilities. But we don’t pay taxes to private citizens. We pay taxes to our government.

And moving forward, the city must figure out a way to prioritize pedestrians during extreme weather events. If the logistics are impossible, if the snow simply can’t be cleared in an efficient manner, maybe emergency crews of some kind can be dispatched at dangerous intersections to help people cross the road in one piece so they don’t have to rely on the kindness of strangers -- if they happen to pass by.

I’m glad we passed by on that unforgivable day on Kingston Road. But what if we hadn’t?