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Taking a break from trying to clear my interminably plowed in sidewalk, and this tweet gives me a flash of inspiration about why I'm worried about the efficacy of a city wide municipal shoveling program https://twitter.com/mplsalex/status/1342941152706760713
First, to be clear, the current system does not work. This is not a defense of the status quo.
One of the most important aspects of my job is asking, and getting answers to, a simple question. "What problem are you trying to solve." It seems silly, but often solutions are proposed without a full understanding of the problem
Relatedly, a technique for getting to the bottom of a problem is known as "Five Whys." They're both ways of interrogating a problem to get past symptoms or personnel issues to get to root cause(s) or systemic issues https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_whys
The problem we're facing is that the sidewalks are not uniformally passable in a reasonable time frame after a snow fall. The first "why" is that the sidewalks aren't cleared in a timely manner
Since sidewalk clearing is currently the responsibility of property owners, the next question to answer is why property owners aren't uniformally clearing their sidewalks, and here we can get a lot of "whys" (which can cause some branching in this technique)
A few whys come to mind. Property owners have no real reason to clear sidewalks. Perhaps they are incapable of clearing the sidewalks, through absense, illness, or lack of proper equipment (all either temporary or permanent conditions).
Or perhaps, like me, the sidewalk and street is such that the the city's act of clearing the streets dumps all the snow on the sidewalk, creating a never ending battle between my 40v electric snow thrower and a 30 ton city snowplow (who's gonna win that battle?)
Back to that first why, property owners just choosing not to clear their sidewalks. Why don't property owners have a motivation to shovel? Shoveling is legally required, but the enforcement clearly isn't sufficient to motivate people to shovel. And this is where I get worried
Why isn't enforcement sufficient? Well the city has a process for receiving complaints, inspecting properties, dispatching crews, and fining/charging the property owner. I think "the city" believes this to be an acceptable system that delivers cleared sidewalks in a timely manner
Note here "the city" isn't just the city council, but also the entire bureaucracy from department heads all the way down to individual inspectors and public works employees. While I know individuals will have different opinions, there is a bureaucratic consensus that emerges
This is the same bureaucracy that will do the design and implementation of a municipal clearing program. And this is where we come down to defining the problem.
If the problem is that people aren't clearing the sidewalks in time, then municipal clearing sounds reasonable. But I believe the city generally thinks the current system works, including the timelines of a week or more for the enforcement mechanism to work and clear a sidewalk
If the problem is actually "the city thinks it's reasonable for it to take a week or more after a snow for sidewalks to be clear" well then municipal clearing sounds not so great. In fact, the city taking 7 days to clear sidewalks would probably, on average, be worse than now
"If I were a City council member I would simply pass a law that municipal clearing should be good."
The way the city works, the council would pass a staff direction for public works to come forward with proposals for a municipal clearing program. It would not have specifics on how the program should work, because I think that would be seen as micromanaging by the council
The existing bureaucracy would bring forward proposals that are ludicrously expensive, take far too long to clear sidewalks, or most likely, both. It's not anyone's fault, but the nature of a large bureaucracy. It will continue to operate within the limits it has set for itself
So to me, the real problem to solve is that the city thinks the current system is ok. And I think the council could put forward staff directions that wouldn't be seen as too much micromanagement that would push the bureaucracy in the right direction.
Maybe after all that, it will turn out that municipal clearing is the answer. But right now, I think it would be a solution to the wrong problem
This is, I think, a very reasonable idea of a first round of sidewalk clearing reforms https://twitter.com/PhilmerPhiI/status/1342974188873678853?s=19
It is a "reform" which I think is necessary to steer the ship of the bureaucracy. I think it handily deals with the first "why" I'd identified, and addresses the second which I hadn't even addressed. Unfortunately it still doesn't touch the 3rd.
The third is an entire other can of worms, and one that municipal clearing will not really address. We know there's a general problem where plowing the street pushes snow back into a cleared crosswalk. But there's another more specific case, like mine.
I have no boulevard between my sidewalk and the street. When the street is cleared to the curb, it is all pushed into my sidewalk. To really solve that... well let's just say in comparison, even city wide municipal clearing would look like a mealy mouthed reform
The street design is all wrong, the sidewalk design is all wrong, the interaction between the street and sidewalk is all wrong, the street clearing standards are all wrong.
This is where I start to ramble, but I think the design of our sidewalks does not lend itself to effective municipal clearing.
My mind is usually less focused on a final destination and more on current and present opportunities to make improvements (mentally I see it like stearing a large cargo ship, big changes are possible, but they happen a slowly and a little bit at a time).
But here's some ideas on what I think a final destination might look like
Identify a city wide network of high priority sidewalks. Not just commerical corridors, but other civically important paths like routes to school (I live on a path between the light rail and a high school, so this one specifically jumps out to me)
Redesign/rebuild these sidewalks to a certain standard that makes them easy to clear. The standard would be designed with mechanical clearance in mind. It would enable quickly clearing the sidewalks, and probably include a minimum cleared width, and places for snow to be stored
With this network defined, municipal clearance would be easy on it, just a bobcat with a 4-5 foot plow to push the snow aside into a designated space, and maybe follow up with a brush attachment to clear to the surface
The rest of the city would be done similarly to how we do it now, but I've got a couple ideas.
First, the sidewalks are split up into thousands of individual zones (maybe each zone is a single street frontage). Local institutions like businesses or apartments or schools (that have the means to own, operate, and store the kind of equipment needed to do bulk snow removal)...
Would be contracted to clear those sidewalks, along with a robust series of random inspections by the city, and encouraging local residents to report any issues, to ensure the sidewalks are truly being cleared.
Another option, property owners are responsible for their property, but if you see an uncleared property you can clear it and get paid by the city (and if the city wants to fine property owners to pass that cost onto them, fine by me).
I think you'd end up with a combination of neighbors helping each other out, and bounty hunting crews looking for properties to clear
Either way, I think to do a good job clearing a sidewalk, you need some understanding of the sidewalk that comes with experience. For example I know that winds will blow south and anything on my lawn will drift and blow into the sidewalk.
I have to keep that in mind when I clear that sidewalk, thinking about where I can actually pile up snow to keep it from blowing back onto the sidewalk. You might think the front yard is a nice place to put snow from the sidewalk, but you'd be wrong.
I think a city worker with the best of intentions would come through and throw sidewalk up into the yard, and 30 minutes later it'd all be back on the sidewalk
