One small step for Ottawa winter walkers could be one great leap for a liveable city
Ottawa will shovel the Corktown and Flora footbridges over the Rideau Canal, releasing the walkways from the annual winter “stair prison.”
Bruce Deachman, Ottawa Citizen
Published Nov 14, 2023 • Last updated 59 minutes ago • 2 minute read
Are those the snow-free footsteps of progress I hear?
On Tuesday morning, Somerset Coun. Ariel Troster and her Capital ward counterpart Shawn Menard were informed that the stairs of the Corktown and Flora footbridges over the Rideau Canal would be cleared of snow this winter.
In past winters, only the ramps leading to and from the bridges were cleared, leaving a longer, sloped detour for pedestrians. The two councillors had lobbied the city to change this policy.
According to Quentin Levesque, director of Roads & Parking Services in the city’s Public Works Department, the plan to shovel those stairs will be a pilot project this season, allowing the city to gather feedback from both the staff doing the shovelling, and constituents doing the walking.
Hopefully, these small steps will lead to greater strides by the city — and perhaps other agencies in charge of where and how we can access our outdoor public spaces (are you listening NCC and Parks Canada?) — to clear even more staircases that are typically chained off throughout our winters, as well as deal with other winter wonderland-related impediments that keep us out of parks or, in the case of sidewalk ice buildup, force us to push our strollers onto roads and trust that motorists will do the decent thing and slow down.
How could it not? When I wrote about the subject a year ago, I called the embassy of Mongolia to see how officials in their capital, Ulaanbaatar — the coldest capital city on earth — dealt with the matter. Officials there told me they clear all the public staircases. How can we not?
It appears, however, that snow-removal changes beyond the two footbridges won’t occur anytime soon, at least not at the municipal level. Levesque’s note indicates the city won’t be making any alterations or improvements to its Winter Maintenance Quality Standards this winter.
But let’s not look this snowy morsel of a gift horse in the mouth, but rather count our lucky stairs and revel in the admittedly only slight freedom we’ve gained from what Troster calls “stair prison.” Surely when the city sees all the goodwill it will accumulate at a relatively insignificant cost, other staircases will similarly be freed from winter’s icy grip. Could the city’s Ebenezer Scrooge-like miserliness be melted by the sight of children walking into parks once again? Perhaps municipal stair-shoveling could be included among the activities that count towards high school students’ required 40 hours of volunteer community service.
Could Ottawa become more a more liveable city when the groundhogs are hibernating? Tuesday’s announcement gives me hope.
https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local...-liveable-city