Does the photo above look familiar to you? Have you seen something similar?
We are fortunate in Long Branch that the City provides snow plowing during the winter to help make walking on Long Branch sidewalks safer for everyone.
However, over the past few years, Long Branch residents are seeing damage to the City-owned boulevards, where the sidewalk plows have gouged out swathes of turf from the boulevards. And the same thing is happening on the front yards adjacent to the sidewalks.
The winter of 2022-2023 was probably the most egregious example. The damage seemed more widespread and more severe than ever.
The City claims to have a fleet of 300 sidewalk snow plows, but our understanding is that plowing outside of downtown Toronto is handled by a joint-venture contractor as part of a $1 Billion contract.
Technically, homeowners aren’t on the hook to repair damage caused to yards and boulevards by sidewalk plows because these areas are owned by the City. However, most homeowners look after these areas as if they were their own property and take great pride in doing so. After all, a well-maintained yard is pleasing to the eye.
The cause of the damage is related to the equipment selected to do the plowing. In most of Long Branch, sidewalks are 48 inches wide. The apparent width of the plows is 60 inches wide. This means the plows will gouge out a 12-inch wide swathe on one side of the sidewalk or the other.
In the left hand photo above, you can see the fibre optic cable exposed and cut. (Rogers was too cheap to install cable with a protective conduit and buried the cable only an inch or so below ground level). The right had photo shows a retaining wall that was pushed about 2 feet by the sidewalk plow.
The City’s “solution” to this problem is to scatter grass seed over damaged areas of boulevards to re-grow the turf there. Then, when winter comes, those same areas get gouged again and, in spring, the City sows grass seed again. There’s an excellent article in the January18th edition of The Toronto Star that discussed this issue and why the damage seems worse than in previous years.
I submitted a complaint to 311 for the damage in front of our house. I received only an acknowledgement that I’d submitted a complaint. No other response.
I wrote to our City Councillor, Amber Morley, with the above photos and more. I received no acknowledgement or response. No phone call from one of her staff. And no visit from a staff member, even though I extended an invitation to see the damage first hand. Not impressed!!!
All that happened was – you guessed it – a crew eventually came around to spread a meagre amount of topsoil over the damage and throw some grass seed onto this. Despite all the rain we received recently, there are no signs the grass seed is germinating.
We get that maybe the selection of plow widths is limited (though we seriously doubt that’s the case). So, if the only equipment available is 60″ wide, it would make sense to update the sidewalks to be 60″ wide. That would mean taking up some of the boulevard, the adjacent front yards or both. But we don’t think residents would really complain about new sidewalks that we even and easier to walk on. Some of the sidewalks in Long Branch had cracked and heaving paving slabs that created tripping hazards.
A few years ago – pre-COVID – the City undertook a major project to replace curbs, sidewalks and re-pave streets in the western section of Long Branch where I live. This covered the north-south streets from Fortieth to Thirty Fifth as well as the cross streets. The curbs were removed and replaced. The streets were stripped and re-paved. However, the City only replaced damaged sidewalk slabs, meaing they kept the width of the sidewalk at its original 48″. On three streets, Fortieth, Thirty Ninth and Thirty Fifth, they replaced the entire sidewalks and replaced them with 60″ wide sidewalks. Why not standardize on all streets?
Why can’t this city get its act together?
The street renewal project described above could best be described as a cosmetic treatment. We’ve had numerous watermain breaks and sinkholes – signs of the aging infrastructure beneath our streets. The City replaced water mains (and sewers as well, I believe) on Thirty Fifth Street but not on other streets in our portion of Long Branch. Less than one year after this project, we had a major watermain break near the Tim Horton’s at Thirty Eighth and Lakeshore – one that literally lifted the roadbed over a foot and that had water spraying out of the asphalt. We had a couple of sinkholes on our street. It took the City nearly a year to repair them. Their idea was to put a traffic cone on the sinkhole.
While it would be an inconvenience to put up with the process of replacing water mains, we believe most residents would recognize it as a long-term investment. Plus, if you’re planning to replace the roadbed, it would be less costly, in the long run, to do the extra work to replace water mains and sewers so the newly paved streets will stay pristine longer.
What You Can Do
Write to our Councillor, Amber Morley, to let her know how you feel about this issue. It doesn’t look like she will take action until she sees how widespread this issue is and how we deel about it.
Yes, I agree. The designers of sidewalks should design the width of the plow blade. Good planning except driver are on their cell phones all the time instead of watching where they are going.
I’ve been in a battle with the Cityon this issue ever since it began providing this service. The fellow who plows our sidewalks indicated some years back that they were oblidged to maintain the 60″ width in order to accomodate wheelchair access and anyway, thier equipment was incapable of creating a narrower path. Then last year, the city announced it was purchasing 50 new plows to accomodate the narrower sidewalks in some of the older downtown neighborhoods. Unfortunately, Longbranch wasn’t included. Nevertheless, this purchase negates the “access” argument. Non response by past and present councillors shows they don’t care so for myself, I have dealt with the issue by placing steel posts on either side of the sidewalk at either end of my property at the beginning of winter which prevent the plow from accessing my sidewalk. I have made it clear to the plow operator that I will maintain my own sidewalk, thank you vey much. So far (the last 3 years), they have accomdated my request and my sidewalk has remained in reasonable condition. It’s unfortunate that these measures are necessary.
I think sidewalks should be accessible, so if 60″ is what’s needed to accommodate wheelchairs, that’s fine. But do it everywhere. Make it a standard.
Good comment! You’ve added useful information to our post.
How is this issue taken to the attention of Amber Morley? AND, what is her response??????
You can call her constiuency office or email her. I wrote a letter and sent it via email. I got ZERO response. Mark Grimes had some good people working for him. Don’t see the same with Amber Morley.
Here is what I wrote to Mark Grimes office in October 2020 (following up a phone call from the year before). And while I did get several responses from his office, nothing was done. After an offer to generate a petition was rejected, it became clear to me that this was an issue they were not prepapred to take on.
Dear councillor Grimes,
I am following up with concerns expressed to your staff by phone 1 year ago (for which I have had no response).
I have lived at 16 James Street (corner of James and 37th) since the mid-80’s and love our neighborhood. I live on a corner lot and have done my part to keep the 50m city portion of our property in good condition over the decades that we have lived here. Ironically, since amalgamation, the city has undermined my efforts to maintain the property during the winter when it introduced sidewalk snow plowing and in so doing, has carelessly destroyed the sod on either side of my 37th St sidewalk every season since. This is a result of sidewalk snow plow blades that are set to a width far in excess of the 1220mm sidewalk that is common in this neighborhood. (My James St sidewalk is considerably wider and there is no issue)
Every winter, the sod on either side of the 37th St sidewalk is turned over like a freshly plowed farmers field and I am left to fix the mess in the spring. I’m sure you are aware that over the last year our neighborhood has been enhanced with repaired (and/or replaced) sidewalks and boulevards and new sod was laid as a part of the process. I had hoped that our narrow sidewalk would be replaced with a wider version that meets current standards but this did not occur (blamed on local conflicting bylaws and grandfathering). And notwithstanding that the construction project manager delayed laying the new sod until the arrival of this summer’s heat wave causing much of the sod to die, I still would like to protect the sod as much as possible from yet another winter of intentional destruction on the part of your snow removal team.
To date I have been given the brush off with excuses such as:
– “The blade width on the snow plow is mandated by code and cannot be altered”
o (to me this reads, “I can’t be bothered changing the blade width every time the sidewalk width changes)
– “The code is based on accessibility requirements for wheelchairs”
o None of the sidewalks south of Lakeshore are wide enough to meet the current “recommendation” (not code) of 1525mm – 1675mm defined in the Toronto Accessibility Guidelines (which allow two wheelchairs to pass in opposite directions unencumbered). The best any current sidewalk in our neighborhood can provide is sufficient width to allow unencumbered travel by a single wheelchair. At 1220mm, the width of our 37th St. sidewalk provides ample room for one-way traffic.
o If the city truly cared about meeting this recommendation, they would have widened the sidewalk during the infrastructure upgrades this past year.
– “Don’t worry, if your grass is damaged, just call 311 and they will arranged to have it repaired in the spring”
o This is amazing. For the sake of catering to a snow plow operator’s apathy, the city is prepared to waste resources of time and (taxpayer) money every year to repair the unnecessary damage they have created?
– “there are conflicting bylaws that are still being managed and consolidated as a result of amalgamation”
o And 22 years later the city is still screwing around with minutia like this? Shameful.
May I offer a few possible solutions to this conundrum?
– Since it is not possible to provide two-way wheelchair traffic on any sidewalk in the neighborhood, set the narrowest sidewalk that allows sufficient one-way access as the default blade width for the entire neighborhood
o Yes, the snow plow blade widths are adjustable
Or, if each sidewalk must be plowed according to its specific width,
– Upgrade the snowplows with pushbutton control for the blade width so they can be easily adjusted by the operator on the fly to match each variation that exists
o Afterall, this is 2020, controllable width blades can’t be rocket science
Or, if a controllable blade width upgrade is not feasible,
– Map out the sidewalks in each neighborhood according to width (easy route on a GPS). Have the plow operator do all of the sidewalks of a certain width first before manually adjusting the blade to then complete the next consistent width and so on. I have no idea how many variations there are in sidewalk width in our neighborhood
Any of these initiatives could be funded through cost savings from preventable spring repairs to the neighborhood boulevards and would pay for itself in the first year.
Can you help me to make sure that this foolishness will not repeat itself again this winter? I am writing on my own behalf but this is a problem on any street in our neighborhood with sidewalks that are narrower than the snow plow operator’s standard blade width. If necessary, I am prepared to erect posts at either end of my own section of the 37th street sidewalk to prevent any plow with excessive blade width from having access to the sidewalk. I’d far rather shovel the sidewalk myself than let the city destroy it yet again.
Thank you for giving this your attention. I realize this may seem frivolous during Covid but it is an issue that has been going on for far too long, is an easy fix and would be a neighborhood-wide win/win. The city has invested a lot of money to upgrade the neighborhood in the last year. Please don’t let the winter crew destroy it all before we’ve even had a chance to enjoy the enhancements that have been made.
Hi Ric: I like that you didn’t just complain, but proposed some solutionss. If only the City would listen to its residents and take some positive action instead of just patching with band aids.
Hi Ronald,
This is Matt Cook, Director of Operations from Councillor Morley’s office. This post was brought to my attention this morning. I’d like to apologize for not replying to your email, as the neighbourhood lead for Long Branch that is my responsibility and I have been so busy over the past month that I did get behind on replying to many emails. We have been making changes to our office team and operations to ensure that we get the speed of our replies to an acceptable standard moving forward.
Regarding the quality of snow clearing, I’d like to provide a bit more information. This is the first year of a new multi-year contract and there has definitely been some “growing pains” as new contractors learn their routes and familiarize themselves with their assigned neighbourhoods. Councillor Morley is very much aware of the issues and challenges that came with our winter maintenance services this year; this is something that must be addressed by council before next winter to ensure that the necessary improvements are made.
The silver lining, is that the costs of curb and sod repairs required as a result of snow clearing efforts are the responsibility of the contractors. That is secured within the winter maintenance contract. The City is not on the hook for those costs. However those damages do need to be reported through 311 so that they are in the queue for the spring repairs. Anyone can do so here:
https://www.toronto.ca/home/311-toronto-at-your-service/create-a-service-request/#category/snow-clearing-and-winter-maintenance/plow-damage
Additionally, our office is aware of the recurring issue of sod damage in certain areas of the ward due to standard sized sidewalk plows and older, narrower sidewalks. We have already had preliminary discussions with our contacts in Transportation Services about the possibility using narrower sidewalk plows in areas where sidewalks are older and narrower. I cannot provide a guarantee, but it is something that we are working on and trying to get in place.
Thanks for your time.
Matt Cook – Director of Operations, Office of Councillor Amber Morley