[St. John's] Transport development (Highways, Airport, and Public Transit)

[Horsell]

Does pedestrian traffic fall under this thread? It does now.

With the City now set to spend some coin to study snow clearing, perhaps this would be a good place to put forward some thoughts and ideas.

I will go on record as saying that I do NOT attempt to walk anywhere once the snow flies, being a car centric person, however I will try to keep an open mind.

To me, there are some basic facts that come into play when discussing snow clearing in St. John’s:

First and foremost is that our winters are very unpredictable. Yes, it will snow and at times it will snow a lot. Sometimes we can go weeks without snow, when we get to “enjoy” RDF.

We have hills…lots of steep hills. We have streets that are glorified cart paths…and in fact once were said cart paths.

Money/budgets are finite, or at least have an “acceptable” limit.

Of course there any many other facts and/or opinions to be considered in this broad discussion.

And now for a few of my personal opinions and pet peeves regarding the winter effort.

Topic # 1 – Staffing: Much has been said in recent weeks about the fact that so many operators were laid off before winter was over. Ironically, not much was said when they were hired BEFORE winter began, back in November. Staffing is tough. In order to attract people to the job you have to provide a reasonable period of employment. What should those guarantees be? How much flexibility should be there? I think the City unions are certainly calling the shots on this one. Hands up who is in favor of a certain degree of private contracting out of operations?

Topic # 2 – Snow removal: For full disclosure I will admit to being a suburbanite. I have a big two car driveway to park my cars and a lawn to throw the snow on. When I see what downtown residents have to put up with in terms of digging their cars out with nowhere to put the snow, I feel for them. How can we ease their pain by removing snow as soon as possible? Perhaps it is time to revisit the concept of melting the snow on site, as opposed to trucking. The cost model may have changed in recent years.

Topic # 3 – Sidewalks: Trying to clear some portion of sidewalks properly may be better than trying to clear 134 Km of sidewalks poorly. What gets cleared, when it gets cleared and how it gets cleared needs a serious look. In my travels this winter I have seen sidewalks “cleared” that don’t need to be (with people walking on the opposite side of the street) and NO sidewalks cleared on busy 4 lane roads such as Thorburn Rd. I don’t think it is every pedestrian’s right to expect every foot of sidewalk they may use to be plowed but I do believe a better job can be done to keep them out of harm’s way.

I could probably go on for hours on this topic but perhaps I’ll channel my efforts into a submission to the “consultants”. I have ideas as to how I think things could be fixed without blowing the budget. Ironically, I don’t think I’ve heard one suggestion yet from our elected officials. Where is the “Leadership” on this issue?