Now that the snow has melted away and we have our mobility back across the city, I thought it would be a good moment to reflect on the impact that snow has on Victoria and possibly what we could do to make it a little better in the years to come.

This year was a clarifying time for me as a pedestrian. Last October, I started walking my son to his daycare downtown on my commute. This means I have a big stroller with me each day. While generally this has shown me where some of the tighter places are on our nearby sidewalks, the Family Day weekend snow and my commute on the Tuesday morning showed me the impact of snow on mobility at all. Now I was able to get the stroller downtown on that day but not without some significant struggle. It was clear that if this was a mobility scooter or wheelchair trying to make the same trip it would have been absolutely impossible and that is not okay. Even more frustrating is the lack of consistency in the places that had a cleared sidewalks, those that didn’t and the varying degrees of the clearing. The worst offender I saw in my walk was actually the City of Victoria which was quite disappointing actually, and in both cases the uncleared sidewalks created a significant border between two areas of town

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How Sidewalks are Cleared

I will admit waking up on the Saturday and seeing the large volume of snow and then getting out with the shovel and seeing my neighbours doing the same, created a great sense of community. In a very short time, with each of us doing a little bit more than the space in front of where we lived, the sidewalks were clear with just a couple of minor exceptions. This does get to the very odd fact that it is up to the people that live on a street or the businesses with sidewalks out front that are responsible to clear the sidewalk, while at the same time the City maintains the responsibility to clear the streets and bike lanes (and don’t worry I recognise outside of the new bike lanes, few were actually cleared). It does show a prioritisation in the same way that we see in what a government funds and what it puts over to non-profits to build or provide. Maybe we should think about whether this is the best option because not everyone clears their sidewalk and not everyone clears it to the same level. What you end up with is a mish-mash or full sidewalks, single-track walking paths and those that are uncleared. That doesn’t even mention the issues with intersections where there can be mountains from the snow plows to climb over to get across a road.

In some cities there are areas of sidewalk that are cleared by city machinery that would be similar to those that are used for the bike lanes (maybe they could have a dual purpose?). One of the issues with that is that it may not work outside of the downtown core.

Inconsistency of Sidewalks

Even on a bright sunny day one of the biggest challenges facing a pedestrian, especially during COVID is the state and nature of our sidewalks. I have written about this a few times (here, here, and here). They can be narrow, twisting, bumpy and in some places non-existent. Really it is this inconsistency of the sidewalks that creates the necessity for the people that live and work next to the building to shovel it because the City would need to have a different tool for almost every block. This means that really we can’t use a street clearing tool like those used on the bike lanes currently.

This is really the starting point for where I think we need to focus on is eliminating this mish-mash of sidewalk styles.

A Starting Place to Move Forward

What can be done to fix all of this? First, I realise that the city budget is not going to allow us to just switch to a completely City run sidewalk shoveling. But what if there were “Snow Routes” or pedestrian priority routes to downtown from the neighbourhoods that were cleared by the city. To start with there might be just a few routes in each direction and over time more could be added.

For these pedestrian priority routes we would ensure that the sidewalks were wide enough to be machine cleared in a short amount of time. This would likely mean that along these routes there would have to be some widening of the current sidewalks which may mean some loss of parking and there may be some need to move utility poles or lamp standards to ensure a pathway for the street clearing machinery.

With these routes in place, rather than having to deal with the mish-mash of sidewalks all the way to your destination, when you left your house you would simply have to make your way to the pedestrian priority route and from there a clear route to downtown where the sidewalks would be cleared already. I have included a map of where I think the first pedestrian routes could go in.

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The added bonus of this is that on all the other days of the year, these routes would be wide promenades that would be attractive to pedestrians and would likely be a focal point for commerce and city life.

I would love to hear what you think about the idea and how your journeys were on the sidewalks the days after the snowfall.