'We all pay': Residents blast city for ignoring pedestrian safety during freak winter storm

Mississauga.com
April 17, 2018
Rachael Williams

Residents are voicing their frustration over the City of Mississauga’s handling of the freak winter ice storm over the weekend.

A combination of freezing rain, ice pellets and heavy winds made for treacherous conditions in parts of Mississauga. What made things worse, according to a handful of residents on social media, was the city’s failure to clear sidewalks, bus stops and trails while major arterial roads were plowed in a timely manner.

“We all pay to sustain Mississauga, but city council only cares about one user – cars. People (voters, pedestrians, cyclists, taxpayers, families) come after the needs of fast machines, it seems,” tweeted Rahul Mehta, community activist and advocate for designing “complete streets.”

Others tweeted similar images and photographs of unplowed sidewalks, intersection crossings, secondary roads and bus stops, calling on the city to show the same amount of concern for pedestrians and cyclists as they would drivers.

“We have heard your frustrations,” said Mississauga Mayor Bonnie Crombie, who went on to explain the city’s rationale for leaving residential areas unplowed.

“We did so for three reasons -- primarily we were concerned it would cause additional flooding…clog the catch basins…and also it would lead to a large, icy windrow at the bottom of your driveway.”

Ward 9 Coun. Pat Saito said she received a number of complaints about residential streets and sidewalks not being plowed in her ward.

 “As our snow contract had expired a week prior (as most cities had) we were also short on manpower and equipment which made the task even harder.”

The city’s snow-clearing contracts expired on March 30, on par with other GTA municipalities.

“We (City of Mississauga) extended contracts for any available snow-clearing equipment and began clearing priority roads,” said Mickey Frost, director, works operations and maintenance. “Now that the rain has ended and we have completed priority roads, our focus is salting residential roads. We continue to clear bus stops and sidewalks.”
Crombie estimates the city had just over 80 trucks plowing the roads during the storm, far less than the roughly 375 pieces of winter equipment that would typically be available to deal with a storm of this magnitude.

“Most of us recognized this storm as a freak of nature and one of those things that Canadians occasionally have to endure,” said Ward 5 Coun. Carolyn Parrish, who received 26 calls in response to the storm. “I thank my staff for their patience and my constituents for their toughing it out."

Over a five-day span, the city received 758 calls to 311, the citizen contact centre line, which Crombie described as “perfectly normal” during a winter storm.

“I just want to thank the crews, our staff and first responders because they worked all weekend and did an outstanding job,” said Crombie. “I would also like to thank the residents for their patience and understanding.”