Comment 106400

By CharlesBall (registered) | Posted November 21, 2014 at 13:23:40

I was listening to this issue on CFRB who interviewed the City department head on snow clearing. He said that there was not enough snow to warrant plowing and that they could not salt in advance as salt needs fluid to stick.

Based on current snow clearing technology and funding, there is no way to clear bike lanes in a snowfall situation like we had this past week without a significant investment in new technology.

There are minimum maintenance standards that the City has to comply with by law. Apparently, those standards do not require that they plow when the snowfall is below a certain amount. Since they were not required to plow, they do not plow. They were required to salt. However, without significant vehicular traffic the salting will not clear a bike lane.

It would seem to me that the best way to advocate for a change would be to approach the Province asking them to change the legislation and the regulations making the minimum standards that apply to roadways different than those for bike lanes.

Trying to force the City to do it would be useless in my view because they will simply say that they do not have the budget to plow bike lanes when they are not required to do it for roadways.

For years the Municipalities aggressively lobbied the Province to put these minimum standards in place to reduce their liability and to reduce the stress on their budgets. If they cannot be forced to clear snow for pedestrians at major intersections surrounding hospitals, they will never clear bike paths.

Look at the regulations. http://www.e-laws.gov.on.ca/html/regs/en...

Comment edited by CharlesBall on 2014-11-21 13:26:32

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