For kids, skiers and anyone sure on their feet, Toronto’s recent snow was a blast of wintry pleasure. But for many others it created a sort of prison.
The city has been far too slow at digging out from twin storms earlier this month. Lots of sidewalks went uncleared for well over a week. Complaints piled up as, contrary to what was plain to see, the city claimed the work had been done.
The accumulated snow wasn’t too bad for drivers, who could power through a certain amount of it. But many Torontonians don’t drive. In the central city, where Toronto has been pushing most of its growth for decades, more than half of households don’t have a car. For these residents, the situation was unacceptable.
This is more than an inconvenience. Imagine a senior worried about falling, a person in a wheelchair or maybe someone with stroller-age children. In large swathes of Toronto, such people were left effectively housebound.
Stranding people who have no other way to get around is more than a breakdown of decency. It’s another sign the most important city in the country is struggling to meet the basic needs of its residents. Making it possible to get around a city is a fundamental task of local government.
This is not the first time the city has fallen short on its core responsibilities. Toronto residents have raised concerns for years over lacklustre park maintenance, long ferry lines and difficulty accessing youth recreation programs.
What links these issues is that they are fundamental to the bargain urban people make with their cities. At its core, this bargain involves paying more money to get less real estate, and in return having access to an interesting and vibrant city.
Being able to get around and to enjoy public spaces is key to the deal. Toronto is failing to keep its end of the bargain.
The failure became so glaring that on Tuesday Mayor Olivia Chow asked the city manager and the auditor-general to look into the snow-clearing mess. That’s good as far as it goes. But it shouldn’t take nearly two weeks of increasing public anger for a city’s leader to realize something has gone wrong.
Even worse, this failure was forecast. A staff report last summer acknowledged that “current council-approved service levels do not account for major snow events.”
Part of this is simply due to funding. Toronto has a bigger job removing snow than Montreal, although it gets less of it, due to its greater distance of roads and sidewalks. But the Quebec city spends 25-per-cent-more on snow clearing and excels at it.
It didn’t take a historic snowfall to expose Toronto’s vulnerability, nothing close to the 100 centimetres in 1999 that brought in the army. The two dumps of snow in mid-February totalled less than half as much. It was bad but not cataclysmic.
It was enough to reveal the local transit agency did not have an extreme weather plan. Transit riders trying to board were left scrambling over piles of snow and streetcar passengers had to step in to move a vehicle blocking their journey.
Non-drivers have long been an afterthought in Toronto. For decades, the city plowed the roads in older neighbourhoods but expected residents to clear the public sidewalk. This never made sense – these areas have the most people walking – and in 2021 city council finally agreed to fund sidewalk clearing in all neighbourhoods.
Where sidewalk plows did not appear this month, many residents stepped up to do the work. Good on them. Still, it takes only one person not to clear their snow to render a block unwalkable for many.
Being able to leave home should not depend on the goodwill of neighbours with shovels. But there is hope. Toronto was noticeably faster clearing roads than sidewalks, meaning the problem may have been more one of choices than ability.
Highway and main roads have to be prioritized. To maximize efficient mobility, bus and streetcar stops should also be at the top of the list. And the greatest mobility for the least able means sidewalks should be cleared before smaller roads.
Toronto’s situation finally improved earlier this week … as rising temperatures started melting the snow. Without this good luck it’s unclear how much longer people would have been stuck.
Public anger over snow removal has a way of dissipating come spring. No one wants to remember the winter that was. But Toronto would be wise to think about how better to keep its end of the bargain. The city’s appeal risks slipping away.