Proposal: here's a long-term plan to eventually save the money we spend on snow-clearance and have our streets clean and dry at all times. First, we start by reducing the street clearing budget from $125 million to $60 million.
The city could clear the main arteries.
But residential streets would just find a way to take the snow from in front of their homes and dump them onto their front lawns, sort of like we are doing already the last week or so.
And city hall could try to sucker citizens into shoveling tasks by making them responsible for shoveling snow and ice from the sidewalks in front of their homes.
You just dump that snow onto a lawn and you're done.
Next we take the $60 million savings and start building heated sidewalks and roads.
New laws would make to that any road being built or resurfaced would then have to come with heated sidewalks.
It might cost about $1 million per block to do, more or less. (Okay, probably a bit more...). The province could fund this by pulling the plug on the wasteful multi-billion Turcot Interchange remake, which really only requires repair rather than replacement.
You can use electricity to heat the sidewalks but grab some of that heat from Hades, you're going to save good money by going geothermal.
Heated sidewalks and roads might seem like a ridiculous extravagance but each block would be always clear of snow, there would be no more environmentally-damaging salt or gravel or truck trips to the riverside.
And eventually the snow clearing required for the city would be tiny, so the $125 million we now spend would become just a fraction of that.
Or else we could just wait for global warming to heat this sucker up and turn the snow into rain.
10 comments:
Or we could just start by establishing a Think Tank of some of our Best & Brightest Scientists & Engineers.
They could find some way to harness the massive amounts of hot air generated by likes of (many) politicians & put this to real use.
Blow all the cold fronts away promptly when necessary.
Timing aside, seems to me that less than half of a massive snow dump being cleared in a major city is not acceptable~for whatever reason.
Apathy has to be, by now, in a considerably growing mode by those of us who're taxed to the max here.
That said, prior comment re: hot air engineering still applies.
Just leave those parliamentary/city hall doors open, or install turbo-powered suction devices exhausted to the outside.
Should keep us clean until Spring.
Such sub-surface heating coils would eventually succumb to the climate.
I know of one house in upper Westmount that has such coils. Not sure how effective they really are, though.
Before mechanization, we used to hire gangs of unemployed to clear the streets. Today, they ought to recruit the local deadbeats to do the same.
In China, I do believe that residents are still responsible for clearing snow from their front access.
Or make the roads solar roadways, get the juice from that.
And the Turcot is far, far beyond repair. There's just so much neglect a structure can withstand until the point of no return.
The sidewalk in front of the Canada Steamship Lines office on Square Victoria is heated, it makes a big difference compared to the rest of the sidewalk on that street.
I'm not against this idea, it would be especially good on hilly streets and main roads like Ste Cat. It would pay for itself soon enough: less accidents, more shopping, less overtime paid to city workers doing 18 hour shifts clearing snow, etc... The heat doesn't have to be on 24/7...
Baron Empain
Sweden (and I think Norway/finland) have had heated sidewalks in parts of Stockholm for at least 25 years. I never understood why Montreal (and other Canadian cities) do not look at what other Nordic countries do, but then again it is due to a myopic awareness on the part of those who get elected. They are not educated in architecture, planning, urban studies, etc; (though Robert Libman was trained as an architect...) and seem to have very little curiousness about the world beyond. This said, I am beyond tired of hearing people bemoan "oh my god they have not cleared my street yet" Look people, they have 3000 people working 70 hours a week, 2000 pieces of equipment out there. Has anyone ever sat back and though "gee just how big is the island? I wonder how many roads there are? Gee I wonder how many cars are parked that nobody moves and they have move them dealying one street for 15-30 minutes every single block.?" Last night I went for a walk, and on Rene Levesque and watched a snowblower fill an dump truck. From the corner of Atwater heading East it started. The huge dump truck was full by the time it reach the end of the Children Hospitals parking lot on the opposite side of the street. That is about 100 meters approx. Now if anyone cares to do the math, which clearly whining Montrealers do not like to do...how many 1000s of meters does the city have? Every turck then has to leave dump its load and come back...and I am sure in the day there is no traffic to contend with. I mean really! Name one city that gets as much snow as we do and clears it as fast? Name one? Moscow...? HAs anyone been to Moscow? I have and it is a mess for weeks. Only the main arteries are ever plowed? Helsinki? Does not get dumps as big as here? Nor does Stockholm, nor Oslo. Go to Halifax, Calgary, Toronto (they call in the Army 1948, 1999 etc) Edmonton, Saskatoon - the people whine all the same amount. Should we pay for 5000 pieces of equipment and 10 000 people out there> Oh no because my taxes will go up. Comparatively, Montreal has probably the best snow clearing ability in the world for a city its size. The mega storm in 1971 April, the clearing of it and most storms back then was half of what it is now, and people complain it is not fast. Come on. Knee jerk canned reactions only indicate a provincial knowledge of the issues at hand without any wider contextual understanding. However, one can definitely say the AMT trains are less reliable than any western train system in the first world, and maybe even some in the second or third world! Anyway, that is my rant. Yeah, your street ain't clear neither was mine. It took 1 hour of the damn siren trucks to get people to move their car before they could bring the snowblower to get the 6' high mounds, even when it was indicated they would be coming before then! My street only runs one city block between Ste. Catherine and Maisonneuve. That is my rant!
I suspect that most of the complainers are relatively recent immigrants from countries which do not have any winter to speak of, and are therefore unrealistic as to how much work is required to accomplish the task. Besides, aren't we ALL guilty of "instant gratification" to some degree?
That said, it seems that today's snow removal crews operate somewhat differently than they did in decades gone by.
For one thing, for many years snowblowers used to dump the snow onto neighbouring lawns and not into trucks. Not sure if the unions had anything to do with that, or if residents complained about it. Probably both.
Amazingly, in Hampstead the blowers do exactly that: dump snow onto the lawns of the obviously well-heeled.
I do think that--where possible-- at least one sidewalk on any given street ought to be cleared simultaneously by the street plow, and I have seen this done many times in the past.
The number of elderly citizens who need to go shopping or pick up prescriptions has definitely increased since the 1950s plus.
In general the city does a reasonable job of snow clearing, let's just say that for the sake of peace.
It was a Holiday, but the 36-hour break did not help.
Agree that folks can be idiots when it comes to taking responsibility for their cars. Driving is a privilege that should entail some degree of courtesy/awareness & consideration.IMO.
Finally, some areas of city were less-plowed than others. And my fear is for the disabled & for seniors. Let's create a new category for Sherpas at Immigration. They could then train others, perhaps in a Youth/Back-To-Work Program. How To Negotiate 4-foot Snowbanks.
Ask the building managements of 630 Rene Levesque and 1245 Sherbrooke W. Both had heated plazas that are no longer working or removed.
Ottawa used those on the steps of the stairs of it's diesel streetcar (the "O-Train") at the Carling station, and some people got electrical shocks...
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